The Conversation (website)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Conversation launched in Australia in March 2011 with a premise that most media organisations had never tried: let university researchers write the news. Not press releases about research. Not quotes tucked into a journalist's story. The researchers themselves, sitting down at a keyboard, explaining what they know to people who want to understand the world.

  By September 2019, the site was reaching 10.7 million users every month online. When you added in every republication across other outlets, that combined figure climbed to 40 million people. The site had grown from a single Australian edition to a global network of eight editions, operating in multiple languages, staffed by more than 150 full-time employees.

  How did a nonprofit media experiment born out of a conversation between two people in Melbourne become one of the more widely read sources of research-based journalism on the planet? And what happens when the people writing the news are the same people who spent years studying the subject? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Melbourne Blueprint

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  Andrew Jaspan first raised the idea that would become The Conversation in 2009, in a conversation with Glyn Davis, who was then vice chancellor at the University of Melbourne. Jaspan had been asked to write a report on how the university engaged with the public. What he produced was something closer to a manifesto. He imagined the university as, in his words, "a giant newsroom", where academics and researchers worked alongside editors to produce writing that engaged directly with current affairs.

  That document became the blueprint. Jaspan and his co-founder Jack Rejtman received support from Melbourne University in mid-2009, which gave them time to work out the business model before any money was on the table. By February 2010, they had developed not just their editorial concept but also their branding and business identity. They presented that full package to potential partners through a formal Information Memorandum.

  The fundraising that followed was significant. They secured ten million dollars from four universities, Melbourne, Monash, Australian National University, and the University of Western Australia, along with CSIRO, the Government of Victoria, the Government of Australia, and the Commonwealth Bank. That coalition of funders told a story about what The Conversation was trying to do: it sat at the intersection of academia, government, and civic interest, and it needed all three to get off the ground.

  From the start, the site operated under a specific rule about who could publish there. Except in exceptional circumstances, only academics employed by, or formally connected to, accredited institutions were permitted to write for it. That restriction was not an accident. It was the whole point.

• 3. How the Articles Get Made

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  Academic authors at The Conversation either pitch their own topics or get commissioned to write on subjects where they are recognised experts. Once an article arrives in the newsroom, editors who often have backgrounds in traditional journalism shape it for a general audience, balancing accessibility with the rigour that research demands. The original author then reviews the edited version before publication.

  All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence with a no-derivatives condition. That licence is what makes the republication model work: any outlet can pick up and run a Conversation article without paying a fee, as long as they do not alter the text. The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and CNN have all republished articles that first appeared on the site. Around 80 percent of the site's readership has a non-academic background, which means the editing step is not just a courtesy. It is the mechanism by which expert knowledge actually reaches the people the site is trying to serve.

  Authors are required to disclose conflicts of interest, and their personal dashboards on the site show them data about how their articles are performing with readers. The platform is built on a custom system developed in Ruby on Rails, designed so that authors and editors can work on a piece at the same time. The intention behind that real-time feature is partly practical and partly cultural: it was meant to help academic authors become more comfortable with social media and public engagement.

  The site's fact-checking operation takes the accountability layer further. Fact-checks are produced by academics, then blind peer reviewed by a second academic who evaluates the accuracy of the original check. In 2016, that unit was accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, an alliance hosted at the Poynter Institute in the United States. The criteria for that accreditation include non-partisanship, transparency about funding and methods, and a commitment to publishing corrections openly.

• 4. Going Global

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  The United Kingdom edition launched on the 16th of May 2013, with Stephen Khan as editor and Jonathan Hyams as chief executive. Andrew Jaspan had secured seed funding for the UK launch in 2012, and the first cohort of thirteen founding member institutions included City, University of London, whose president, professor Sir Paul Curran, chaired the board of trustees. By August 2014, approximately 3,000 academics were contributing to the UK edition. Membership eventually grew to more than 80 universities across the UK and Europe, including Cambridge, Oxford, and Trinity College Dublin. By 2019, the edition had published 24,000 articles written by 14,000 academics. The UK edition funds itself largely through partnered universities, which provide around 90 percent of its income, with additional support from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Wellcome Trust.

  The United States edition first published on the 21st of October 2014. Thomas Fiedler, then dean of the School of Communications at Boston University, offered to host it and provide newsroom space. With that institutional base in place, Jaspan was able to raise 2.3 million dollars in launch funding. Support came from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, among others. The U.S. edition later opened offices in Atlanta and New York, with Harvard University and MIT among its partnered institutions.

  A French edition launched in September 2015, based in Paris, with Fabrice Rousselot as publication director. He had previously worked for Libération. Initial backing came from French academic institutions including the University of Lorraine, the Conference of University Presidents, Paris Sciences et Lettres University, and the Institut Universitaire de France. The edition launched with a budget of one million euros.

  The Canadian edition was co-founded on the 26th of June 2017 by Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young, both associate professors in journalism at the University of British Columbia. Launch funding included a 200,000-dollar grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Scott White, the former editor-in-chief of The Canadian Press, became the founding editor. A French-language Canadian edition, La Conversation Canada, followed in 2018.

  Across the full network, by the time the table of editions was last updated, stories commissioned by The Conversation were being republished in 90 countries, in 23 languages, and read more than 40 million times a month.

• 5. Africa and Indonesia

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  The Conversation Africa launched in May 2015, headquartered in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa. Within its first year, 21 African universities had endorsed the project and 240 academics had contributed articles. The edition established offices in Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided three million dollars in funding to support the Africa operation.

  The Indonesian edition has a slightly different origin story. The idea emerged from a 2015 meeting between Sangkot Marzuki, who was then chair of AIPI, Indonesia's Academy of Sciences, and Andrew Jaspan. The formal foundation for the Indonesian edition was established on the 4th of September 2017, and the site went live two days later, on the 6th of September 2017, under Executive Editor Prodita Kusuma Sabarini. The founding group included press figure Aristides Katoppo, conservation biologist Jatna Supriatna, and Sangkot Marzuki himself, with RTS Masli providing the registered domicile.

  During its trial period, the Indonesian edition received grant support from the Myer Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and the Embassy of France in Jakarta. The law firm Soemadipradja and Taher provided pro bono legal assistance. As the edition moved into 2019, support continued from the Ford Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Knowledge Sector Initiative program, and the Tifa Foundation. That funding enabled newsroom expansion and the creation of new divisions covering finance, management, business development, and partnerships.

  The Indonesian edition also runs science communication training and a Science Leadership Collaborative program specifically designed for early-career researchers, extending its mission beyond publishing into building capacity for the next generation of contributors.

• 6. Founding Tension and Departure

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  In March 2017, Andrew Jaspan resigned as executive director and editor of The Conversation. The departure came six months after he had been placed on enforced leave following complaints from senior staff in Melbourne about both his management style and the direction of the organisation globally. The break was not quiet. Management teams from the UK, U.S., and Africa offices wrote a formal letter of no confidence to the Conversation Media Group, asking that Jaspan not play an active role in the organisation's future.

  The fact that the departure took the form it did matters for understanding the organisation. The Conversation was not a single publication with a single editorial voice. By 2017 it was a network of independent entities, each with its own editor-in-chief, board, and funding base. The letter from three regional offices to the parent group reflected that distributed structure. No single person could simply hold the whole thing together or pull it apart.

  In the UK, Chris Waiting, a former executive at the BBC and AP, was appointed CEO in April 2018, a year after the transition from Jaspan. In the U.S., Maria Balinska had served as editor after launch, before moving to the US-UK Fulbright Commission. Beth Daley then became editor and general manager in 2019, the same year the UK edition joined the Independent Monitor for the Press as a member. In January 2024, the U.S. site launched The Conversation Local, a local-news focused outlet operating in four markets: Detroit, South Florida, Colorado, and Philadelphia. That expansion, funded by the Knight Foundation, worked with 150 local outlets in its first year.