Edwy Plenel

Hervé Edwy Plenel (born 31 August 1952) is a French political journalist.

Plenel spent his childhood in Martinique and his youth in Algiers, Algeria.

He studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris.

His career began in 1976 as a journalist for Rouge, the official newspaper of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (LCR – Ligue communiste révolutionnaire).

He briefly worked for Le Matin de Paris in 1980, before moving to the French newspaper Le Monde, where he worked as the paper's education editor (1980–82), legal columnist (1982–90), a reporter (1991), head of the legal department (1992–94), chief editor (1994–95), assistant editorial director (1995–96), editor (1996–2000), and editor-in-chief (2000–04).

From 1985 to 1986, while working for Le Monde, he was one of the targets of a wiretapping scandal perpetrated by a secret presidential anti-terrorism cell, which he had implicated in the "Irish of Vincennes" affair for framing three Irish nationals on terrorism charges.

In 2001, he was awarded the Prix Médicis essai for his essay Secrets de jeunesse (Secrets of Youth).

He resigned from the editorial staff of Le Monde in November 2004, and left the newspaper on 31 October 2005.

He is currently the publisher of Mediapart, an Internet-based subscription journal which he founded in 2008.

In 2023, Plenel accused the actress and filmmaker Maïwenn of assaulting him in a Parisian restaurant, alleging she grabbed him by the hair before spitting in his face.