Since 2017 he has served as a board member and Vice President of the Pacific Century Institute, a track-two 'building bridges' nonprofit based in Los Angeles, with branch offices in East Asia.
He attended public schools on Long Island before transferring to the Franciscan Preparatory Seminary in Pennsylvania at the age of fifteen.
In 1965 (March 3) his editorial arguing against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war appeared in the Amherst student newspaper, where he was managing editor.
There, Plate served on the editorial board of the policy review and earned his master's degree in public affairs from Princeton in 1969, with an emphasis on the U.S. role in the world.
His career in journalism includes long stints at: Newsday (Long Island, under David Laventhol), New York Magazine (under Clay Felker), the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (under James Bellows), where he won a coveted Deadline Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and for three-years-running the Beat Editorial Award from The Greater Los Angeles Press Club,[3] The Daily Mail of London (under Sir David English); New York Newsday (under Don Forst); and Time magazine (under Ray Cave).
In 1989, Plate moved from New York City to Los Angeles (under Editor Shelby Coffey and Publisher and CEO David Laventhol.
Since then he has conduced joint live Internet interactive courses from LMU with major Asian universities such as Fudan in Shanghai (2015) and Yonsei in Seoul (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).
In Los Angeles, at Loyola Marymount University, Plate, as its Distinguished Scholar in Asian and Pacific Studies, teaches a number of courses, including "An Introduction to the Media and Politics of Asia."
APMN served as a network for educators, journalists, media professionals, government and business officials concerned with regionally common issues, controversies and opportunities between America and the Pacific Rim.
[7] Professor Plate, a senior fellow at the Center for the Digital Future,[8] now teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where – wholly unretired – he is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies and founder and president of Asia Media International, the successor to Asia Media at UCLA.