The Conversation, the startup Australian news site, wants to bring academic expertise to breaking news

NiemanJouralismLab reporting:
What would happen if you had close to 1,000 academics available to contribute to the breaking news cycle? Would it change the course, and the discourse, of news? Andrew Jaspan thinks it will. Jaspan, formerly an editor at The Age, the Melbourne-based newspaper, founded The Conversation, an Australian nonprofit news site, in order to combat problems that are just as present in Oz as in other news environments: shrinking newsrooms and a sound-bite-driven broadcast culture.
But The Conversation's approach is a novel one: While the site uses professional journalists as its editors, it uses academics to provide the content for the site. The goal, says the site's charter, is to provide "a fact-based and editorially-independent forum" that will "unlock the knowledge and expertise of researchers and academics to provide the public with clarity and insight into society's biggest problems" and "give experts a greater voice in shaping scientific, cultural and intellectual agendas by providing a trusted platform that values and promotes new thinking and evidence-based research."
...As Jaspan explained: “Our model is not so much to use the university as a source of news, though we do report research findings as news. What we really try to do is use academics and researchers to analyze live news events, like the killing of Osama Bin Laden through to the Fukiyama earthquakes or whatever [other] complex news stories…. We are using people who are experts to give greater depth to the understanding of complex and live issues.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/05/the-conversation-the-startup-australian-news-site-wants-to-bring-academic-expertise-to-breaking-news/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bf96900a94-DAILY_EMAIL