Academics are in on The Conversation
Canada set to launch offshoot of global network providing free explanatory journalism
When a new national journalism startup launches this summer, it will be funded largely by universities and powered by academics, but aimed at as broad a public audience as possible.
It’s a new twist in the information landscape.
The Conversation is a web-based model of what is being called “academic journalism,” which is really just a way of distinguishing it from news journalism, says Alfred Hermida, director of the journalism school at the University of British Columbia and a co-founder of the project with colleague Mary Lynn Young.
“Essentially what we’re talking about is explanatory journalism,” written by academics working with a team of editors, he says. “So journalism that provides greater context and explanation for things that are happening in the news. And of course this happens already in journalism. It’s not completely new.”
But there is less of that kind of journalism in Canada as the news industry declines. “And that’s one of the challenges here. The reality is that newsrooms are increasingly short-staffed. We’re not trying to replace the newsroom, but rather we’re complementing and enhancing the journalism in Canada through this different approach.”
You can’t have too much information, Hermida notes. When you look around and see who’s being paid to produce thoughtful analysis on relevant topics — well, academics are.
“There are really smart academics in Canada doing remarkable work, who can help us understand our world, not just locally, regionally, nationally but internationally.” And they increasingly want their research to be more broadly known and understood. “They want to participate in the public discourse.”
The Conversation is a network that began in Australia in 2011 and has since spread to the U.S., the U.K., France and Africa. It’s an interesting model: The stories, which range from politics and science to culture and religion, are published on each country’s website but are also available free for republication — by anyone, anywhere, online or print — under a Creative Commons licence.
More than 400 Canadian academics had registered as wanting to contribute to The Conversation globally before the Canadian edition was even announced.
“Yes, there will be a website called The Conversation Canada that you can go to,” Hermida says, “but the big emphasis is on outreach to audiences where they are . . . and getting the
“We’re complementing and enhancing the journalism in Canada through this different approach.” ALFRED HERMIDA THE CONVERSATION CANADA CO-FOUNDER
material published beyond The Conversation.”
Worldwide, The Conversation attracts 4.8 million users per month, says Scott White, a former editor-inchief of The Canadian Press news service who has just been named editor of The Conversation Canada. But through republication, that number goes up to 35 million.
“There will be daily newsletters and pushing it out through Facebook and Twitter,” he says. “But the thing I like about this is that because it’s Creative Commons, more people can get to use it. And that will be a big part of our goal, to work with as many partners as we can to use the content.”
White is meeting with traditional and new media across the country to discuss running Conversation material, and he has reached an agreement with The Canadian Press to distribute content to its clients on a separate channel from CP’s own news wires.
“I’ve seen the content of the other international Conversation sites, and it’s very good, and it’s timely,” Canadian Press executive editor Gerry Arnold says. “They’re quite nimble, they react well to providing analysis and insight and context to developing events, and I think it will resonate with serious journalists in Canada who are looking to add that type of independent commentary to what they’re doing.”
The public’s appetite for intelligent, fact-based information seems to be growing, says David Estok, vice-president of communications at the University of Toronto, which is a founding member of The Conversation Canada.
He links this with two stories in particular: “I think it was shortly after Brexit and of course with the rise of Trump in the States that the sites really took off,” Estok says. “There was this recognition of a real need for high-quality, analytical, what we’re calling academic journalism. It was these people who are experts and evidence-based who were taking on a more journalistic approach and presenting their findings and their thinking.
“And of course since then we’ve had a lot of coverage of fake news, alternative facts, continuing challenges facing media.”
The Canadian edition is aiming for a soft launch this summer and to be in full production by Sept. 1, White says. It’s a small team to start — White and three journalists to commission and edit material in collaboration with the academic contributors — and they want to cover as wide a spectrum as possible in the five or so stories they will be able to handle each day.
But the experience at other national Conversation sites is that science and technology are of particular interest to audiences, so they will be a focus here.
“In Canada, at one time, there would have been a lot of people assigned to cover science, all the STEM (science, technology, engineering and medicine) areas,” White says. “People had universities as a beat, and that’s harder and harder for them to do now.”
So will news outlets pick up the stories? White doesn’t see why they wouldn’t. Each article is accompanied by a disclosure statement from the academic to identify any funding or affiliations. Each article is edited by a journalist. And each article is free. But if it’s all free, what’s the business model?
The Conversation Canada is set up as a non-profit organization, funded mostly by university membership fees but also with foundation money and federal research grants. Hermida won’t give a number yet for how many universities are members, though he says they represent a cross-section of Canadian regions and school sizes. The site will be almost entirely in English but will have a French-language section and will translate some articles, Hermida says. A separate Canadian site in French is under discussion, led by an academic group in Quebec.
“We’ve been working on securing at least a three-year runway” for The Conversation Canada, “but we’ve also been working on a 10-year financial model to lead toward sustainability,” he says.
More university membership is a key part of that. The U.K. edition started in 2013 with the support of 13 universities; it now has six dozen. Its newsroom has grown from seven journalists to more than 20.
“We’re convinced that this is of such benefit to the academic sector because in some ways it helps them achieve their mission, which is unlocking the amazing expertise they have and making it accessible to the broader public,” Hermida says.
He uses the Australian edition as an example: on the website, 80 per cent of the audience is non-academic.
“Now within that, there’s a significant audience of teachers, there’s an audience of people working in government policy, there’s people working in health care and medical services. So you can see some professions would have an interest here,” he says. But “it’s not a website for academics.”
Hermida and Young won’t be involved in The Conversation Canada operations, but they will continue doing research on what’s working well, what topics resonate with Canadians.
“From a research perspective, The Conversation Canada is our lab to investigate the impact of explanatory academic journalism,” Hermida says.
And while, “there is no magic bullet” to keeping the public informed in the face of a declining news industry, cautions White, “this is part of the solution. Not the entire solution, but I think it can be a really important part.”