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A 360 degree view
The Conversation founder ’ s new evidence-based wire service .
Andrew Jaspan interviewed by Wade Zaglas
Professor Andrew Jaspan is the founder of The Conversation , and former editor-in-chief at both The Age and The Sunday Age . He and his team have just launched a closed trial of the 360info service , which has come out of extensive development at The Global Academy hosted at Monash University .
While Jaspan says The Conversation was a customer-facing publication “ following a news agenda ”, the 360info service is focused on research relating to the UN Sustainable Development Goals – the world ’ s “ biggest , pressing problems ” of our day .
Professional curators will bring in the thinking , knowledge and research from universities across the region . With all content driven by evidence-based research , it will be freely available and able to be reworked in a similar fashion to newswire content , but under creative commons 4.0 International . Importantly , Jaspan states that the curators will be required to send their articles back to the researchers before being made available to ensure it “ remains true to the research ”.
Monash University president and vicechancellor Professor Margaret Gardner said 360info will provide a rich set of multifaceted and research-based source material to news and media outlets . And while the service is based at and serviced by Monash , it will include high-impact research from the best academics across the world .
“ It is the aspiration of Monash that the increased availability of reliable and credible information informs public debate on the issues of importance to people around the world ,” she said .
“ Additionally , the project closely aligns with Monash ’ s commitment to address the key global challenges of the age , including climate change , geopolitical security and fostering thriving communities .”
CR : Tell us about the genesis of the Global Academy and the 360info service ? How and why did it come about ? AJ : After leaving as editor of The Age in 2008 , I wanted to do something a little bit different , but the critical thing I was looking for was finding a way of providing a service which was based on specialist knowledge . The newsroom I had at The Age was being slowly reduced because the business model was one in which advertising was collapsing , and we had to take costs out . The biggest costs at newspapers tend to be the editorial staff . So we were taking out the science , education , health and environment reporters . What I wanted to do was to find a new way of bringing high quality information into the public arena . That idea became The Conversation , where the writers were academics . I ran it in much the same way as at The Age where we had daily morning conferences , where we would think about what we just read either on websites or in newspapers or heard on the radio , and immediately engage with the news cycle . It was feeding off and driven by the news cycle , and giving opinion or commentary on those kind of events .
We covered the entire world , but then I set up The Conversation UK , the US site at Boston University , and I got the funding together to get the South African site going and then the French site and so on . So , the Australian site became essentially covered an agenda driven by the Australian news cycle , written by Australian-based academics , edited by Australian-based editors and distributed largely to an Australian audience .
I wanted to try and learn from all that and just figure out what we might do next , and that has now become , first the Global Academy and now 360info .
First of all , I wanted to park the breaking news agenda and leave that to The Conversation and others . Instead , I wanted an agenda which was more focused
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