What do you need to have a productive conversation? That might seem a strange question, but the answer really matters. You can’t have a good conversation if you don’t listen properly, or keep an open mind. It also helps if you’re willing to admit what you don’t know, which in my case means admitting many editorial decisions are really just gut instinct and educated guesswork.

That’s why we place so much importance on the feedback you give us. And that’s why I’m grateful to every one of the 5,738 people who filled out our annual reader survey and told us what they think about our work.

The good news is you value our work with academics to explain the news and inject facts and evidence into public discussion. Dozens of you said kind things, like the eloquent reader who described The Conversation as a “lake of sanity amid mountains of clickbait”.

It’s particularly encouraging that many of you value the expertise of our authors and their lack of bias in analysing current events. 80% of you read us to get expert analysis of current events. 64% of you get new ideas and perspectives you can’t find elsewhere. Many of you said you use our articles to broaden understanding, inform discussion with peers and family, and guide decisions.

But perhaps the most useful feedback is the candid criticism. It’s very useful to know that sometimes we’re too verbose, too academic or lacking in balance. The criticisms of our news judgement sting a little, but they will help. Your observations about the website and the difficulty of finding older articles give us areas to work on.

This year, there was also quite a bit of enthusiasm about the new Your Say section of reader feedback in our newsletter. But there were also many people unhappy about the lack of comments on articles, and the fact the two-way conversation we’re aiming to create is still a little bit one-sided. There is more work to do here, too.

There’s lots more insightful feedback, but I mustn’t bang on (see the above note about “verbosity”). We’re going to spend more time poring over these results, but for now, thank you for being part of this conversation, for your encouraging and critical feedback, and for helping to make our gut instincts and our guesswork just that little bit better informed.

You can view more takeaways from the 2025 survey results on our audience and impact page here.

The Conversation