“A handover in good order”. At 71, journalist Edwy Plenel announced on Monday February 12 that he would be leaving the management of Mediapart, an online investigative media outlet that he co-founded sixteen years ago, on March 14.
The current publishing director has not revealed the name of his successor.
“I will continue to write for Mediapart, I will continue to be present through my pen but I will not be the legal manager, the boss of the company”, he clarified in the program “Affaires sensible” on France Inter .
Edwy Plenel announces that he will leave the presidency of #Mediapart "in mid-March"
➡️ https://t.co/9S3NLqBTCf@edwyplenel was on the microphone of @FabriceDrouelle in #AffairesSensibles pic.twitter.com/wY1o4taLP9
— France Inter (@franceinter) February 12, 2024
“The miracle of Mediapart is that the team is essentially between 25 and 45 years old, I am 71. It is normal that it lives, independently of us,” underlined the journalist with the mustache and with a mischievous smile, feared by political leaders of all stripes.
With his team, he launched the Cahuzac affair at the end of 2012, named after the former socialist Budget Minister who was ousted after lying about his secret bank account held abroad.
Under Nicolas Sarkozy, the boss of Médiapart, with his motivated young editorial team, had investigated the close relations between the billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to L'Oréal cosmetics, and those close to Nicolas Sarkozy, attracting their wrath.
Is Mediapart a newspaper that gives lessons, always on the lookout for prey?
Mediapart, which Edwy Plenel founded in 2008 with François Bonnet, Laurent Mauduit and Marie-Hélène Smiéjan, has 135 employees and 220,000 subscribers © Joël Saget / AFP/Archives
“We have a single compass, which is the public interest. We do not target camps or people,” assures its co-founder, who evokes broad fields of inquiry, from ecology to sexist and sexual violence.
Also read: Edwy Plenel, journalist: Mediapart defends “journalism serving the public interest”
The media has published numerous articles on the #MeToo movement, including testimonies on Gérard Depardieu or more recently on the psychoanalyst Gérard Miller.
An article dedicated in 2021 to Maïwenn's ex-husband, the filmmaker Luc Besson accused of rape by an actress, provoked the fury of the director. Maïwenn had pulled Edwy Plenel's hair in a Parisian restaurant in early 2023. She was recently fined 400 euros.
In good health
Edwy Plenel will leave with peace of mind: Mediapart is “profitable” and “we have no debt”. In 2023, "we have increased our turnover, increased our profit", he underlined before the annual report, also on March 14.
The media, which he founded in 2008 with François Bonnet, Laurent Mauduit and Marie-Hélène Smiéjan, has 135 employees and 220,000 subscribers. In 2019, it protected itself from any “predation” of its capital, by setting up an innovative legal structure.
Journalist Edwy Plenel, co-founder of Mediapart, April 30, 2012 in Paris. © Martin Bureau / AFP/Archives
Its shares now belong to a new non-profit structure, the Fund for a Free Press, via the Society for the Protection of the Independence of Mediapart, an arrangement which, according to its inventors, protects the capital of the online newspaper.
“This structure completely guarantees that no one from the outside can intervene on Mediapart” and “this allows us to see what’s coming,” welcomes the publication director.
Joining the daily Le Monde in 1980, Edwy Plenel, who came from the revolutionary left of the 1970s, began his career in 1976 at the daily Rouge, organ of the Revolutionary Communist League (Trotskyist).
In 1995, after several positions of responsibility, he took over as editor-in-chief of Le Monde. He aroused mixed feelings, his detractors denouncing his “paranoia” while others highlighted his hard work and creativity. He left Le Monde in 2004.
In the 1980s, several cases involving the French presidency and which he was investigating, including the attack by the French secret services on the Rainbow Warrior, a Greenpeace ship which was campaigning against French nuclear tests in Polynesia, had aroused the ire of the President François Mitterrand.
With AFP
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