Edwy Plenel has been a professional journalist for nearly fifty years. He joined Le Monde in 1980, where he remained for twenty-five years, authoring several investigations that marked the history of investigative journalism in France (including the Vincennes Irish affair, the Élysée's secret service, the Rainbow Warrior affair, and the Ouvéa cave massacre). He became editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper, a position he held for a decade after fifteen years of field journalism, but left in 2005 due to a disagreement over the loss of economic independence. After a stint teaching at universities in Montpellier and Neuchâtel, he launched Mediapart in early 2008, a fully digital and participatory newspaper that in just a few years became France's third-largest general-interest daily, profitable for fourteen consecutive years. Mediapart champions the investigative and impact journalism that has made him so successful, notably with the Bettencourt, Cahuzac, and Sarkozy-Gaddafi affairs. Edwy Plenel is also the author of more than thirty books, including La Troisième équipe (2015) on the Rainbow Warrior affair and Tous les films sont politiques (2021) about Costa-Gavras’cinema.