Thankyou to supporters of The Conversation. As valued friends and contributors to our work this is a quick update on a few interesting projects we are working on behind the scenes.
First, thanks to some very generous support for our matched giving campaign at the end of last year, we are now in the process of hiring two video journalists to join our digital storytelling team. We’ve already made one very promising appointment (details soon) and the ultimate aim is to expand our video journalism and our social media reach.
In news that is a little bit related, I’m also about to drop my suit at the dry-cleaners ahead of the Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards. In recent years I’ve mostly been at these annual awards as a judge of the investigative journalism award, but this year The Conversation is a finalist in the “Innovation in Journalism” category for two interactives Scam Factories: the inside story of Southeast Asia’s brutal fraud compounds and The Instagram effect: dying for the perfect photo. (And I’ll definitely let you know if we win!)
Back in the Melbourne office, a couple of weeks ago we had a group of interns in our newsroom learning from our senior editors and pitching some great ideas. Our paid two-week internship program is part of our ambition to provide pathways to aspiring journalists. To be honest, though, sometimes it’s hard to tell who is teaching whom, and that was certainly the vibe with this bunch. Read a bit more about their take on things in this LinkedIn post.
There’s lots more in the works, including plans to expand our coverage of education and parenting, and continued debates about whether we should invest more in podcasting or stick to our knitting (so to speak) with more print-based digital coverage.
Wherever we end up on that one, I’m reminded that we are only able to have these types of discussions because of the generous support of people like you.
It’s an honour to work at a media organisation that is single-minded about serving the public good, and one that has so much generous support. So thank you again, please don’t forget to check out our latest impact report and we’ll be in touch with more news (and hopefully a trophy) soon.
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Thank you to the Friends of The Conversation.
With warm wishes,
Misha Ketchell, Editor