If you are looking for informed opinions and analyses of the palm oil sector one new site you might want to check out is The Conversation, a site that is out to combat the skewed picture painted by media darlings and shoddy journalism in Indonesia.
The Conversation was launched on 6 September 2017 by the Melbourne University from their Carlton campus that covers Africa, Australia, Canada, France, UK, US and Indonesia. Each of the areas get their own section.
The Indonesian section is bilingual and as a pilot project The Conversation has also opened a temporary office at the Indonesian Science Academy at Kebayoran Baru in South Jakarta. They will move to more permanent quarters at the National Library at Jalan Salemba next month.
The Conversation is managed by ex journalists from The Jakarta Post Prodita Sabarani, Evi Mariani and Ikram Putra, who is also the Audience Development Manager. Ahmad Nurhashim, formerly from the English-version of Tempo completes the crew.
They function as a group of international editors tasked with rendering the words and thoughts of academics accessible to a wider audience.
“We don’t produce hoax news,” said Prodita with a smile. “Our content can be trusted and relied upon.”
To ensure reliable content, contributing academics are confined to write only in areas where they have an expertise in. Strict codes of conduct and standards are enforced.
Contributors must disclose the source of funding if they are writing on a particular topic. Failure to disclose would result in the contributor being banned from further contributions. “We also have a system of checks into the background of of the contributors,” said Prodita.
Funded by the Open Society Foundation and supported by the Indonesian Academy of Science that provided space for their office, The Conversation aims to increase people’s understanding of important and complex issues so that the quality of public discourse and debate could also be elevated.
One of the areas covered by The Conversation, especially its Indonesian version, is palm oil. So far it has carried 25 postings on palm oil from experts and observers from different countries.
We at the The Palm Scribe will highlight in this platform any palm oil articles from The Conversation that you need to pay attention to.