A year of growth and achievement for The Conversation

Dear Reader, 

The numbers speak for themselves: 2021 was a successful one for The Conversation U.S.’s mission to bring facts and research to the public. We built on the explosive growth in readership we saw in 2020, surpassing last year’s record by 25 million pageviews. We published 2,256 articles from 2,482 scholars on topics ranging from astrophysics to zoology, and with a special emphasis on helping the public understand the coronavirus pandemic through articles from virologists, vaccine experts, public health scholars, historians, political scientists and ethicists.

It was also an important year internally: We matured organizationally, bringing on new staff and striving to stay connected during the ebbs and flows of the pandemic. Please read on for some data points and insight into our achievements and team.

We couldn’t produce this journalism without the support of readers like you. I’m grateful to our more than eleven thousand donors (and if you have not yet given in 2021, there’s still time to donate and get your gift matched 2-for-1 by our board).

Beth Daley
Editor and general manager

Impact

In 2021, our scholars’ stories were published on nearly 1,000 different websites, from CNN and Scientific American to The Moderate Voice and Norway Today, and every sort of website in between. Our presence in print expanded, with 272 local and regional newspapers publishing our work. Stories were featured in large newspapers – like The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe – and hyperlocal, like the Punxsutawney (PA) Spirit, Faribault (MN) Daily News, Port Charlotte (FL) Sun and so many more.

We had over a dozen articles that were read more than a million times, on topics as varied as vaccines, the flu epidemic of 1918 and people who live in airports.

The magic of The Conversation doesn’t stop after the scholar and editor hit the “publish” button on a story; from there, our stories take on a life of their own, giving scholars a public voice and ways to reach large audiences. Conversation scholars were contacted after their stories were published to make appearances on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Bloomberg television, WAMC Northeast Public Radio, “Living Planet” podcast, WLRN South Florida, Sirius XM Radio, Channel Q, “The Academic Minute,” KCBS Radio in San Francisco, KBTX Media College Station, Al Jazeera and countless other outlets. Our scholars have also discussed policy with lawmakers, provided quotes to news outlets, given talks and more this year as a result of writing with us.

Diversity Initiative

This year, we launched an ambitious initiative to increase the diversity of expert voices in The Conversation and the media as a whole. This initiative, with support from 44 of our member universities and four foundations, seeks to find important research from Black, Latinx, AAPI and Indigenous scholars. We are also working to bring to the public the knowledge of a larger number of American experts who are underrepresented in many other ways, including women, residents of rural areas, immigrants, those who identify with LGBTQ+ communities and people working for minority-serving institutions.

As of Dec. 15, we have raised more than $268,000 to support this effort, which will fund professional development for these scholars and mentorship in public engagement, creating a database to help reporters find more diverse sources, and more.

Newsletters

Our daily newsletter list has grown by 22,452 subscribers, and we now have a total of 256,708 subscribers to our six distinct newsletters at the time of writing (you can see the newsletters and subscribe to them here). Our newsletters are a cornerstone of our efforts to build an engaged base of readers.

This April, The Conversation launched the “This Week in Religion” newsletter as a joint project with Religion News Service and The Associated Press. This newsletter provides a fascinating mix of insightful articles that explain how religion, spirituality, ethics and atheism affect day-to-day lives as well as events in the news. It combines the best articles from these three news organizations. You can subscribe here. 

We also launched two newsletter courses based on two series of articles we published, on Islam and issues related to trans youth. Subscribers receive a set of emails explaining important aspects of these subjects. You can sign up for Understanding Islam here and Transgender Youth here.

Events

The Conversation hosted 10 free online events for the public, many of which featured scholars who had written for us. Some of these events were co-hosted with other organizations, including The Associated Press and Religion News Service. Highlights included:

• The Engaged Scholar: The Risks, Rewards and Responsibilities of Bringing Your Research to the Public, featuring University of Michigan scholar Andrew Hoffman and Arizona State University President Michael Crow.

• Understanding Gender Diversity: Transgender and gender-diverse teens more visible than ever, featuring scholars Jules Gill-Petersen of Johns Hopkins University and Kacie Kidd of the University of West Virginia.

• You can find all of our webinars from this year on our YouTube channel.

You’re also welcome to join us for our fun next event, co-sponsored with the folks behind the annual Ig Nobel awards.  We’ll be discussing the physics and psychology of cats on January 20th.

Internship program

This year, we hosted our first official summer internship program, led by University Relationship Manager Michelle McAdams. For 10+ weeks, we were joined by AAAS fellows Tamar Lichter Blanks of Rutgers University and Vanessa Vieites of Florida International University (who is now a postdoc at Rutgers), as well as recent Emerson College graduate Thalia Plata.

Left side, front to back: Michelle McAdams, Thalia Plata, and Tamar Lichter-Blanks
Right side, front to back: Chris Calimlim, Alvin Buyinza, Vanessa Vieites, and Ernest Crowder

Business

We are now a $4.5 million dollar nonprofit organization with 33 staffers. We have moved toward sustainability with three main sources of income: foundations and higher education institutions that believe in our mission to democratize knowledge for the public good, and individual donations.  About 10 percent of our income comes from readers like you. Thank you. 

Our annual report is available to download, providing many more details on our past fiscal year.

Teamwork

As the pandemic continues, we have tried to build rapport and team spirit in an all-remote team. A few of us in the Boston area had begun gathering once a week to work together in person (until Omicron hit), and we are working on a new, more permanent workspace for the Boston team that we hope to return to in 2022 (as safety allows). During lulls in the pandemic we were able to gather our fully vaccinated staff for some celebrations.

Leading our efforts to sustain and grow our team is our first-ever human resource manager. 2021 also saw our team grow and fill open positions for a director of finance, marketing communications and events manager, seven editors and a social media/video expert.

Teammates who joined us in 2021

If you’ve read to this point, I hope you’ll agree that The Conversation is worthy of your support. If you’ve already given – thank you, you helped make all this possible. 

Now through the end of the year, your donation will be doubled by a generous match from our board. Its members have put up $40,000 to match donations received by the end of the year, so that your $50 will become $100 and $100 will become $200.

Checks sent to us dated 2021 will also be matched and can be sent to us at 303 Wyman Street, Suite 300, Waltham, MA 02451.  Thank you!