Andrew Jaspan AM (born 20 April 1952) is a British-Australian journalist and Founding Director and Editor-in-Chief of 360info. He is the Founder of The Conversation. He was previously editor-in-chief of Melbourne'sThe Age, editor of London's The Observer, The Sunday Times Scotland (Glasgow), Scotland on Sunday (Edinburgh), The Scotsman Edinburgh), and Sunday Herald (Glasgow), and publisher and managing editor of The Big Issue London. Early life and education Jaspan was born in Manchester and lived in Australia between the ages of seven and fourteen. He completed his Bachelor of Arts in Politics, Modern History and Philosophy from the University of Manchester. He did his thesis on "The Role of the BBC in UK politics". Career After graduating, Jaspan launched The New Manchester Review magazine which focussed on news, investigations and arts and culture. To help fund the magazine, Jaspan ran Monday night concerts at the Band on the Wall pub between 1977–9, showcasing punk bands (including Joy Division, The Buzzcocks, and The Fall) as well as poets (including John Cooper Clark and Adrian Henri). He then started work in the Manchester office of The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror in 1980. In 1983, he moved to London to join The Times, first working on the foreign news desk and then the home news desk. In 1985 he joined The Sunday Times as an assistant editor. In 1988 the paper's editor, Andrew Neil, asked him to move to Glasgow and launch a Scotland edition of The Sunday Times as a competitor to the newly launched Scotland on Sunday by The Scotsman Publications. A year later, he moved instead to be editor of Scotland on Sunday, relaunching it as a quality newspaper which went on to establish a reputation for investigative and campaigning journalism. In 1993 he was appointed editor of The Scotsman but six months later was appointed by the Guardian Media Group as editor of The Observer. In 1996 he was appointed publisher of The Big Issue, the street paper sold by homeless people. The Founder, John Bird, asked Jaspan to improve the quality and mainstream credibility of the magazine. In 1998 he joined Scottish Media Group in Glasgow to prepare the business case for the launch of a new paper in 1999, The Sunday Herald. Under his editorship the paper won numerous awards including Scottish Newspaper of the Year and UK Sunday Newspaper of the Year. The paper closed in