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At a time when journalism is being hit hard globally and some are predicting the end of independent journalism in some parts of the world, it’s time to take a look at what may survive. The Conversation—a nonprofit that brings together scholars and journalists to bring academic writing to a general audience—may tell us a bit about where nonprofit media is headed.
The Conversation, which was founded in Australia in 2011 with $6 million in funding from three universities and the State of Victoria, is thriving amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Traffic is soaring, while its funding model insulates it from the collapse in advertising and subscription revenue hitting other outlets. Its stories are available for republication, for free, under a Creative Commons license—a model that seems particularly beneficial for other news outlets at this moment. “If there were ever a time for expertise and smart journalism, now is it, and we are doing it at a volume no one else is doing and there is no paywall. It is free to use and free to publish,” says Stephen Khan, the editor of The Conversation’s UK edition.
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Today, The Conversation has 10 national and regional editions and more than 150 full-time staff, many of them former journalists with decades of experience at outlets like The Scotsman, Financial Mail, Huffington Post, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Climate Change Weekly. The Conversation’s editors specialize in wrangling academics and editing their dense writing so that
Read more here: https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/the-conversation-covid-19.php