Like much of Australia, The Interpreter is winding down for the Christmas-New Year break.
We will be back for the first half of next week with less-than-the-usual number of posts, and after Christmas we will have daily posts featuring some of The Interpreter's best material from 2014. That's until 12 January, when we are back on deck for 2015.
I feel privileged to have edited The Interpreter through an incredible 2014. It's the year in which we launched a concerted effort to cover the Asia Pacific region from the region, with contributors such as Catriona Croft-Cusworth (Indonesia), Elliot Brennan (Southeast Asia), Robert Kelly (Republic of Korea) and Julian Snelder (Hong Kong), as well as the UK-based Shashank Joshi and Vaughan Winterbottom, who covered South Asia and China respectively. Next year we will add a regular Tokyo contributor to the roster.
I'm also proud that, on top of our usual diet of think pieces, backgrounders and links, this year we made a more concerted effort to cover breaking international events such as the two Malaysian Airlines tragedies, the US-led operation in Iraq, the G20 summit, the Indonesian election and much more. Occasionally we even got ahead of the news, breaking stories about the Indonesian election, China's naval flotilla off Christmas Island, the flaws in the Australia-India uranium deal, and Russia's naval deployment during President Putin's APEC/G20 trip to Asia.
I'd like to thank Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove and Director of Studies Anthony Bubalo for their support of The Interpreter, the small team who have helped get our posts out every day (Alex Oliver, Brendan Thomas-Noone, Marty Harris and Philippa Brant), the team at Twisted Pear for their technical support, and the hundreds of contributors who make The Interpreter the most compelling, influential and occasionally diverting publication of its kind in Australia.
And of course, I thank the readers. Without you...
Please join us next week and throughout the Christmas-New Year break, when we will publish at a reduced pace. You'll see my name on a few 'pre-cooked' posts next week, but this is my last day at the keyboard for 2014. I'll be back on 12 January to start the new year on The Interpreter. Until then, having buried myself in so many crises, conflicts and contests this year, I'm only interested in one thing...