The Conversation, founded in Melbourne in 2011 with university and state government funding, now has ten editions in various countries and 150 employees as well as dozens of freelance contributors; its traffic has more than doubled in the last year alone to 38.1 million monthly site visits. Its specialty is interpreting scholarly research for a general audience, and its articles can be reprinted elsewhere for free. And its outside funding protects it from worry about plummeting ad revenue. Anya Schiffrin looks into how the site’s owners and editors pull it off. – Columbia Journalism Review