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Starting a Conversation
Reflecting on 10 years of The Conversation .
By Andrew Jaspan
Ten years ago The Conversation launched to a bemused and sceptical audience .
Countless people said beforehand : “ So you want to get academics to write to deadlines ?? Forget it . It won ’ t work . They can ’ t even write .” I ignored the warnings and gave it a go , and before long the idea went viral and global with editions springing up in the UK , US , Canada , France , Spain , South Africa and Indonesia .
Together they now employ nearly 200 staff with a monthly reach of 18 million . It ’ s been a gamechanger , though I still fail to know what to call this hybrid of journalism and academia . Perhaps The Conversation slogan sums it up best : ‘ Academic rigour . Journalistic flair .’ How did the idea come about ? While editing The Age at Fairfax I watched as the wheels came off a once hugely profitable advertising business model . The Fairfax management had little idea what to do so they resorted to what it knows best : slash costs and take an axe to the costly editorial budget and staff . Among the first to leave were the specialist reporters with expertise in science , health , environment , business , politics , law and police rounds .
Over the next four years I saw the newsroom being gradually hollowed out after each annual redundancy round . In place of expertise , the general and junior reporters
were told to write about subjects they knew little or nothing about . Did the beancounters and the consultancy firms care ? The unhappy readers certainly did – and they could tell they were being short-changed . To be fair , what was happening at The Age was largely the case worldwide , especially among those publishers without much vision for a blended digital future .
At the end of 2008 Fairfax sacked 550 staff and I was one of them as just reward for objecting to the constant cost-cutting . The next week I got a call from Glyn Davis ( then vice-chancellor at Melbourne university ) who wanted to know what I ’ d do next . I said : “ Find another way of producing quality , accurate and reliable journalism .” “ Good luck !” he replied , though his suggestion that he introduce me to some of the university ’ s smartest thinkers was critical to what happened next .
After meeting and interviewing astrophysicists , earth and climate scientists , ethicists , lawyers and Peter Doherty , the Nobel Laureate and specialist in the area of flu and immunology , I was struck with the thought : what if we could bring all these smart people into a new giant virtual newsroom and have them as our key expert contributors ? What a powerful science team we ’ d have with 3,000 in the Faculty of Science alone ?
I also wanted to address the looming concerns over poor quality information and disinformation / fake news . So we set out to launch a service built on research expertise and underpinned by strict codes of conduct and blind-reviewed through the peer review process . Why ? Because
The Conversation has been transformational in bringing over 20,000 academics into the public mainstream .
if we wanted our readers to trust our content , we had to demonstrate the highest standards in the content ’ s creation through full disclosure of each author ’ s expertise , their funding and any possible conflicts of interest . That ‘ build trust ’ approach was baked into The Conversation model from the outset .
But how would it work in practice ? Peter Doherty gave me the clue . He said after every media interview he would think “ how bad will that turn out to be ?” So we discussed how to avoid that predictable fate . We agreed that the key to a new approach would be for us to work together to marry his subject expertise with my professional editing skills , with clear respect between both parties .
We would start the process by jointly discussing and agreeing the outline of the article , then I would give him a word length and deadline . He would then write the article and pass it back to me to edit and ensure readability … and then would I pass it back for him to approve any changes . That way we avoid any bad surprises . He agreed on that process and I went away to write up the operating model for The Conversation .
I gave the completed proposal for the new service to Glyn Davis and he liked it
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