I think part of the issue is some places (where I am too) use medium for their blog and medium requires an image. Not sure if other blogging platforms do the same though.
It's not a Medium requirement. I've published plenty of articles without images, and the site just adds a blank box as a placeholder.
However, a lot of 'become popular on Medium' guides recommend you use an image, and an image likely looks better than a blank box does, hence all the images.
> Summary: Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to "jazz up" web pages.
I always would want a company blog to be under a company domain, which Medium doesn't allow any more. For various reasons: from a branding/search perspective, for flexibility (e.g. being able to embed whatever you want for visualizations, examples, ...) and to be able to move it without breaking all the links (e.g. when you finally decide Mediums constant popups are a bad look for your professional representation)
Is that why so many medium posts have an irrelevant and distracting image that has to be scrolled past? What an idiotic requirement.
Medium claims to have awesome presentation but I always read their articles in “reader” mode to get rid of the pointless distractions.