The bad is that I think Medium hasn't stayed in one place long enough for people to accurately understand it. But I've been working with them from the beginning of this strategy shift two years ago and the basic strategy hasn't changed at all.
I suppose there are publishers and then there are publishers. I have no doubt they're trying to court people like you but it seems like their bigger ploy is to rope in the big publishers into embracing their platform, to abandon traditional digital publishing platforms.
If I'm a basic blogger or tiny digital publisher, Medium can work, though the tools are so archaic and limited I would become frustrated very quickly. If I'm even at medium-sized, the whole thing is a mess of half-measures that now seems singularly focused on annoying readers.
Throwing my content into a network or allowing me to pay to promote my content or whatever really isn't enough of a sell. I can do that anywhere and keep more of the money.
That depends on the network you are thrown into. The company I work for saw a substantial increase in new leads after moving the corporate blog from self-hosting to Medium.
As much as I dislike the platform too, it is hard to argue with money
It's a shame, I found the editing interface pretty convenient (image embedding in particular) and conceptually the Medium-run publications make a ton of sense.