Early life Plenel spent his childhood in
Martinique and his youth in
Algiers, Algeria. He studied at the
Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris.
Career 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. == Bibliography ==