The Conversation is a network of not-for-profit media outlets that publish news stories written by academics and researchers. It first launched in Australia in March 2011, and has expanded into editions in the United Kingdom in 2013, United States in 2014, Africa and France in 2015, Canada in 2017, Indonesia in 2017, and Spain in 2018. The Conversation publishes all content under a Creative Commons license and, as of September 2019, reported a monthly online audience of 10.7 million users onsite, and a combined reach of 40 million people including republication. Each edition of The Conversation is an independent not-for-profit or charity funded by its university members, government and other grant awarding bodies, corporate partners and reader donations.
Origin
The Conversation was co-founded by Andrew Jaspan and Jack Rejtman. Jaspan first discussed the concept of The Conversation between 2004 and 2008 with Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor at The University of Melbourne. Jaspan wrote a report on the university's engagement with the public, envisioning the university as "a giant newsroom", with the academics and researchers collectively providing authoritative and informed content that engaged with the news cycle and major current affairs issues. After securing funding from Melbourne University and the Victorian State Government, The Conversation Media Group opened its Carlton office in November 2010 with a small team of professional editors and developers, and launched to the public in March 2011.
Operating model
All of the articles that appear on The Conversation are written by academics, based on their area of research. The Conversations editors commission and edit these articles to make sure that they are free of jargon and accessible to a wide audience. The stories published cover topics from politics and culture to health, science and the environment. All stories are published under a Creative Commons — Attribution/No derivatives license and as a result are widely republished by news outlets from the ABC to the Daily Mail, Le Monde to the Washington Post.
Expansion
From its first Melbourne-headquartered Australian edition, The Conversation has expanded to a global network of eight editions, operating in multiple languages. Across the whole network, stories commissioned by The Conversation are now republished in 90 countries, in 23 languages, and read more than 40m times a month.
''The Conversation UK''
The Conversation launched in the UK on 16 May 2013 with Jonathan Hyams as chief executive, Stephen Khan as Editor and Max Landry as chief operating officer, alongside co-founder, Andrew Jaspan. It had 13 founder members, including City, University of London. City’s President, Professor Sir Paul Curran chaired its board of trustees. Landry took over from Hyams as chief executive shortly after launch. Membership grew to more than 80 universities in the UK and Europe, including Cambridge, Oxford and Trinity College Dublin. By 2019 it had published 24,000 articles written by 14,000 academics. In April 2018, it appointed former BBC and AP executive Chris Waiting as its new CEO.
In March 2017, Andrew Jaspan resigned as Executive Director and Editor, six months after being placed on enforced leave after complaints from senior staff in Melbourne about his management style and the global direction of the group. Management of the UK, US and Africa offices also wrote a letter of no confidence to the Conversation Media Group asking that Jaspan not have an active role in the future. Since April 2017, Jaspan has been establishing new media platform The Global Academy, a partnership between universities of Deakin, Melbourne, RMIT and Western Sydney.
FactCheck
In 2016, The Conversations FactCheck unit became the first fact-checking team in Australia and one of only two worldwide accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, which is an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the U.S. The only other fact-checking team accredited under this process is The Washington Post's Fact Checker. The assessment criteria require non-partisanship, fairness, transparency of funding, sources and methods, and a commitment to open and honest corrections.
Technology
The Conversation uses a custom publishing and content management system built in Ruby on Rails. The system enables contributors to collaborate on articles in real time. Articles link to author profiles—including disclosure statements—and personal dashboards show authors' engagement with the public.
