The Conversation, an online international publication that fuses academic and journalistic writing, launched a pilot program Tuesday that will be hosted by Boston University College of Communication.
“It’s exciting to establish this new platform for public scholarship at a great university like BU,” said Maria Balinska, deputy editor of The Conversation, in an email. “The Conversation is an independent platform for analysis and commentary that is written by academics and researchers, edited by journalists and aimed at the general public.”
The Conversation publishes content from an extensive range of subject areas and provides worldwide readers with an unbiased news source, Balinska said.
“Our site looks at the breadth of academic disciplines from science and technology to economics through politics and arts, and we are working with our older sisters in Australia and the UK [United Kingdom] so we can bring a global perspective,” she said.
Thomas Fiedler, the dean of COM and one of the publication’s executive board members, said The Conversation came to BU after seven months in the making. It is a comprehensive way for BU students to understand complex subject matters written by experts.
“The Conversation is a unique journalistic effort where we are putting together people who are experts in a subject area with journalists to bring information to people in a way that is easily understood,” he said. “Too much of what passes for journalism is uninformed, sensationalistic or shallow, and too much of academic writing is written for other academics.”
Fielder said Alexander MacLeod, a BU journalism professor in the London study abroad program, recommended BU as the location for The Conversation and put him in contact with the publication’s editor in chief, Andrew Jaspan.
“[MacLeod] thought Boston would be the ideal place to have the center of The Conversation in the United States because people think of Boston as the hub of higher education,” Fiedler said. “He also thought BU was the right place for it because we are so broadly based.”
Fiedler said this is an opportunity for BU to distinguish itself from other academic institutions.
“The Conversation is going to draw a lot of interest from a lot of scholars from around the world,” he said. “That kind of an association has very positive implications on Boston University and will be seen as a place that recognizes and supports that kind of excellence.”
Balinska said The Conversation will be hiring BU interns in 2015.
Several students in COM said they are excited that The Conversation is coming to BU and look forward to the content the publication will produce.
“What an honor that they chose BU as the university to start this project in Boston,” said Kaley Roberts, a sophomore in COM. “It seems like a great way for students to get even more involved with their professors and people that are potentially in the field that they are going into.”
Roberts said The Conversation would serve as a great outlet for journalists in Boston.
“They also get to be in contact with college students and college professors,” she said. “Boston is such a college oriented town. It seems like a perfect collaboration effort pulling together the media, professors, students and researchers. It seems good for Boston.”
Hannah Herman, a junior in COM, said online journalism publications such as The Conversation are the future of the industry.
“A lot of things have changed in the past ten years,” she said. “Our generation has a very different perspective on things, and some people who are already out there and working the field and have seen the progression, so I think the perspective would be good.”
Monika Nayak contributed to the reporting of this story.
