Victorian Government provides $3m in funding for The Conversation as it launches in France
The Victorian Government has pledged $3m in funding to help support academia meets journalism website The Conversation, securing 32 jobs there.
In May the Federal Government pulled funding for the publisher, forcing them to launch an appeal to readers for donations, which ended up topping $500,000.
Now the Victorian Government has pledged to provide a $3m investment over three years towards the site, on the same day The Conversation announced it is launching in France.
Victorian Minister for Education James Merlino said in a statement: “Our $3 million commitment will allow The Conversation to continue operating for the next three years while it works towards becoming self-sustaining.”
The whole premise of tax payers funding what is obviously a commercially un-sustainable model that is being rolled out worldwide is risky. With the scale they are approaching this is not going to be an easy thing to commercialise and the government money does little more than reduce the importance to do so quickly.