Why you should donate to The Conversation

I’m writing to ask you to donate to The Conversation. This year your support matters more than ever.

In recent weeks massive job losses at Fairfax and News Limited have thrown new light on the parlous state of public interest journalism. Meanwhile, without the clarity that quality journalism brings, public discourse is shrouded in a fog of competing claims, disinformation and spin.

You can see this already in the rise of hostility toward experts. Without journalists with the skills to weigh competing claims, public debate is a free-for-all. Those who shout the loudest prevail and those who know what they’re talking about withdraw in dismay.

The Conversation is a not-for-profit media outlet created in Australia six years ago to address this problem. We team professional journalists with academics who have deep expertise. The journalists help the academics share their knowledge, when you need it, and in a way that it can be easily understood.

We now work with close to 49,500 academics across the globe who bring deep knowledge and rigour. We share their knowledge freely among more than 20,000 republishers so it can reach everyone looking for reliable information.

We do all this as a public service. We do it because we believe good decisions require good information and healthy democracy demands a battle of ideas that’s fair, not feral.

We are only able to do this work because of the generous financial support of universities and institutional supporters who care as much about the public interest as we do. But these contributions can’t cover all our costs, and we also rely on you, our readers.

Each year we have an annual donor drive. For just two weeks, we ask that you help us continue our work to improve the quality of public information in Australia and beyond. With your support we can check more facts, report more research and provide more informed explanation of complex problems.

Please help to keep our democracy healthy by making a monthly donation of $30 a month, or whatever you can. We’ll be indebted to you. And so will democracy.