The Diplomat is an international onlinenews magazine covering politics, society, and culture in the Asia-Pacific region. It is based in Washington, D.C. It was originally an Australian bi-monthly print magazine, founded by Minh Bui Jones, David Llewellyn-Smith and Sung Lee in 2001, but due to financial reasons it was converted into an online magazine in 2009 and moved to Japan. The magazine is currently owned by Trans-Asia Inc.
History
It was originally an Australian bi-monthly print magazine, founded by Minh Bui Jones, David Llewellyn-Smith and Sung Lee in 2001. The first edition was published in April 2002, with Bui Jones as the founding editor and Llewellyn-Smith the founding publisher. The magazine was acquired by James Pach through his company Trans-Asia Inc. in December 2007. Pach assumed the role of executive publisher and hired former Penthouse editor Ian Gerrard to update its presentation. Nonetheless, the print edition suffered continued losses, and The Diplomat eventually went completely online in August 2009. Its Sydney office was closed and its headquarters were moved to Tokyo; Jason Miks was appointed editor in September 2009 and Ulara Nakagawa was appointed associate editor. Miks was succeeded as editor by Harry Kazianis before publisher James Pach took over. Shannon Tiezzi currently serves as editor-in-chief, with Catherine Putz as managing editor. Ankit Panda is a senior editor and podcast host. Franz-Stefan Gady and Prashanth Parameswaran are associate editors. The Diplomat has published interviews with many prominent public figures, including Ali Allawi, Anwar Ibrahim, Ian Macfarlane, Brent Scowcroft, Mike Moore, Jason Yuan, Kim Beazley, Wegger Christian Strømmen, Shankar Prasad Sharma, and Jaliya Wickramasuriya. Prior to 2004, The Diplomat used to run advertisements emphasising the magazine's Australian perspective by presenting the national flags of the United States, the UK, and Australia and logos of Time and The Economist with a headline "To which view do you subscribe?" Time magazine forced the cancellation of such advertisements.
In December 2010, the online news aggregator RealClearWorld cited The Diplomat as one of the top-five world news sites of 2010. In 2011, RCW again listed The Diplomat as one of its top-five world news sites.
