No, they really aren't. They could be. They're only at the center in that you have to have a publication to nominate. But after that? it's a free-for-all. Spend time editing a story, working with the writer, only to find someone else boosted the story. The boost program is a group of editors sitting around a haystack with our arms buried to the elbow looking for the needles in that whole haystack called Medium. If all publications nominated from their own little haystack, then it would be publication centered.