Diplo editor ‘trying to bite at heals of The Economist’

The editor-in-chief of Diplo, the designled monthly international current affairs magazine, says his title can compete with the big news weeklies.

Charles Baker said Diplo, which is currently celebrating its 21st issue, had 10,000 sales with a readership of 20,000 and hoped to build on that.

Baker said: "We're trying to bite at the heels of The Economist. We really do want to compete with them and we are truly becoming an international magazine."

Baker said that Diplo, which costs £4, was born out of a gap in the market for a design-led magazine which appealed to a younger politicised reader.

"I found that politics was being delivered in a stale and traditional way and so in 2004, I gathered a team from Central St Martins College and LSE to produce Diplo. We live in a visualised world where everything is digested through image and we hope to catch that audience."

Baker also revealed that New Statesman chairman Geoffrey Robinson had a look at the magazine and how it was produced before his title was relaunched in June.

"It proves our point — if a magazine is more design-led then it makes the topic more readable. Our philosophy is that we just want to be excited by it," added Baker.