system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does having non-academic publications in garbage outlets make you look bad?

I have a popular article I wanted to publish, but it was only accepted at opinion/blog sites (sort of like HuffPo) that will pretty much publish anything as long as it's coherent and well-written.

My advisor gave me some advice when it comes to academia: never publish in garbage journals.  He does a lot of hiring for the [philosophy] department, and he told me that if you have academic publications in journals that will publish pretty much anything, that's a massive red flag.  The way he put it was something like :

"It's better to have published nothing at all than to have published in crap journals.  If you publish nothing, you might have potential.  Your unpublished stuff might have to cycle through the major journals, but it could find a home one day.  If you publish in trash journals, that tells me that somebody (either you or the reviewers) thinks that your work just isn't good enough to publish in a decent journal."

I'm wondering if the same rules apply to non-academic publications.  I don't think any of the stuff I say in the article would hurt me.  It's something I'm happy to discuss with people and to have my name attached to, I'm just worried if people judge non-academic publications like they judge academic ones.
gpt
There's a major distinction between putting something into questionable "academic journals" - like those which have a horrible reputation because they only have a veneer or peer review or because they will "publish" anything if you pay them, and something intended for mass consumption (like HuffPo).

You are tailoring your writing for both audiences, right? Because if you put most journal articles into mass media publications verbatim they simply wouldn't be read.