The Conversation welcomes the small publisher’s jobs and innovation package negotiated by the Nick Xenophon Team as part of the government’s media reform bill.
“Access to this funding will make an immediate difference to the journalism we do,” said Charis Palmer, Deputy Editor and Head of Digital Strategy at The Conversation.
“Every additional editor we hire enables us to continue to add to and hone our coverage, helping people make sense of a complex and confusing barrage of information.”
Quality information makes markets more efficient. It provides essential insights that help us understand our environment, our culture, our history. It underpins the health and wellbeing of society.
“We’ve also been working on expanding our formats, including comics and animated video explainers that work with broader audiences,” Palmer said.
“This type of innovative storytelling is more time consuming and costly to produce but helps us to reach broader audiences. The way people are consuming information has changed dramatically, and we are evolving with that.”
As one of Australia’s most successful media startups, The Conversation has expanded since its 2011 Australian launch to operate in the UK, US, France, Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and Indonesia.
“Each Conversation is a not-for-profit, funded independently by universities in their market, together with philanthropic and government support. The size of Australia’s university and philanthropy sector means this funding is limited in scope,” said Lisa Watts, Acting CEO of The Conversation Media Group.
The Conversation currently receives $1 million a year in project-based funding from the Victorian Government, through to 2018. This represents roughly a quarter of The Conversation’s annual costs.
The Conversation’s submission to the Public Interest Journalism Inquiry