Look who's contributing to the Conversation

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This was published 13 years ago

Look who's contributing to the Conversation

By Shaun Carney

IN NEWSROOMS around the country, there's one big story obsessing journalists and editors that rarely gets a run in the daily media: does traditional, mainstream journalism have a future? After he was dumped as editor-in-chief of The Age in August 2008, Andrew Jaspan found himself with time and the opportunity to contemplate the question. Jaspan's ouster followed an announcement by the paper's owner, Fairfax Media, that 550 jobs would be cut from its Australian and New Zealand operations.

''The global financial crisis hit, and newspapers were shutting down in America and shedding staff in the UK - it seemed as though there was a closure every week - and I just thought, 'Well, what is the future of journalism?''' he says.

Andrew Jaspan (left) and Jack Rejtman hope to nudge journalism in a new, more positive direction.

Andrew Jaspan (left) and Jack Rejtman hope to nudge journalism in a new, more positive direction.Credit: Angela Wylie

A Manchester native who had been in Melbourne for four years, Jaspan busied himself with short-term projects such as the relaunches of the French paper Liberation and Auckland's Weekend Herald. He also sought out the vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, Glyn Davis, with whom he had forged a strong professional relationship during his time at The Age. They talked at length about the need for big public institutions such as universities to deepen their engagement with the public through the media.

The fruit of those discussions emerged in cyberspace on Thursday: a new website, The Conversation, which attempts to transform the research and analysis of leading universities and research bodies into journalistic product. Jaspan and the co-founder of the site, Jack Rejtman, hope that The Conversation will be able to nudge journalism in a new, more positive direction.

''Journalists are good - very good - at locating and highlighting problems. They are hardwired to be able to tell you what has happened, but not to canvass or produce solutions. Within universities and the research bodies, there is more inclination to look forward and produce proposals, suggest solutions. Jack and I just thought, 'If we can join up the communications skills of journalists with the ideas inside universities, we could have something really interesting,' '' Jaspan says.

Jaspan and Rejtman, an American with an MBA who married an Australian and moved to Melbourne, were introduced by a mutual acquaintance in early 2009; Rejtman had recently overseen the 2008 presidential election coverage for Yahoo! News. Encouraged by Glyn Davis and his stated commitment to public engagement, they started work on the site. Because they had no office, they roamed inner-city Melbourne in search of cafes with free Wi-Fi, where they could use their laptops.

Two years on, they occupy a floor of a Melbourne University-owned building in Carlton, with a staff of 19, including 12 editors, and are backed by the major sandstone universities - the Group of Eight - and the CSIRO. The site's first iteration had links and entry points to 26 articles, from an essay on the role of science by Nobel laureate Peter Doherty to an assessment by a post-doctoral fellow of the recent murky, ethically ambiguous scandal involving a teenage girl and St Kilda Football Club.

Rejtman says the project can count on staged funding of $6 million - a mixture of money from the Victorian and federal governments, universities and corporations, including the Commonwealth Bank and Corrs Chambers Westgarth - during the next three years. By then, he says, the site should be self-funding. He hedges a little on how it would get to a break-even point or better without advertising or subscriptions, but hints at a sponsorship or partnership model. ''There are a number of ways we can get there. You shouldn't underestimate the value for businesses to be associated with a high-quality media entity that is big on disclosure and is pitched at a high-end audience,'' Rejtman says.

He describes the target audience as ''business, leading thinkers, specialist journalists, people in governments and universities. If you are a soccer mum - I hate that term, but I'm using it - and you want to know about climate change or nuclear energy, you can come to us and you'll know that our writers really know their subject.''

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Former Age media writer, now professor of journalism at the University of Canberra, Matthew Ricketson, says The Conversation could find a profitable space in the modern media landscape.

''There's a lot of valuable research and information in our universities, and if this is going to bring that to the public in a digestible form, that's a good thing,'' he says. ''And the intention to focus on solutions, as well as problems, in the journalism is welcome too. All too often nowadays, you can see the capacities of the mainstream media being stretched by public debate and failing to meet readers' desire for solutions to be aired as well as problems.''

Jaspan says he does not expect the site to display its full potential for several weeks. ''As time goes on, it will deepen and the richness of the material will be clear a month from now.''

The Conversation: theconversation.edu.au

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