"The Conversation": Trust us, we're academics

Graham Readfearn | Clearing Up The Climate Debate with A Conversation

Andrew Jaspan, co-founder of a new popular Australia-based media website The Conversation, says as advertising dollars have shrunk, so too have the numbers of experienced journalists who can report and analyse science stories accurately and fairly.
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The Conversation, just three months old, is already registering more than 220,000 visits a month but it is not like any other news website. There is no agency news wire, for example. All the main contributors, of which there are now more than 1000 registered, are academics at universities.

Writers are only allowed to contribute on areas in which they are actively researching, or have a history of researching. Conflicts of interest, such as corporate funding or associations with think-tanks, have to be disclosed to the reader. Even anonymous commentators are banned.

The Conversation's latest venture has been a series of a dozen articles from leading climate researchers, titled "Clearing up the climate debate" which directly challenge the science and credibility of climate change deniers.

To start the series, a group of almost 90 scientists [without disclosing conflicts of interest] co-signed an open letter.

Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community

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