Dov Alfon

Dov Patrick Alfon was born in Sousse 1961. He grew up in Paris. He published his first short story at the age of nine in the comics weekly Spirou while attending the College Henry IV in the fifth arrondissement.[6] On his 11th birthday, the family immigrated to Israel. They settled in Ashdod, where he studied at the Rogozin Makif Guimel secondary school.[7] He later wrote about his childhood in a short autobiographical piece, "The Civilization Teacher."[8] He did his military service in the technological intelligence unit of the IDF.

In 1983, Alfon began writing for "Pi Ha'aton," the student newspaper of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Less than a year later, he was invited by Tom Segev and Nahum Barnea to join a new journalistic venture, the political weekly "Koteret Rashit."

Alfon joined Haaretz in 1989, where he wrote a weekly column, "Kivun Harouah", about the relations between culture and money. He was appointed editor of the cultural page in 1992, turning it to the daily section "Galleria". He launched several new journalistic formats for Haaretz along the years [9] among them "Captain Internet", a weekly column supposedly written by a fictive grandfather investigating the new medium (1994), "The Marker Magazine", a business monthly (2001) and the re-designed Haaretz Weekend Magazine, where he was editor from 1992 to 1998.

Alfon was chief editor of the Kinneret Zmora-Bitan publishing house (2004–2008) and hosted "Nispah Tarbut", a weekly cultural show on Israel's Channel 2 television (2002–2007).

He was appointed editor in chief of Haaretz on May 1, 2008, serving in this position until 2011. In 2008, he published a special issue of the newspaper where leading authors replaced the newspaper reporters for a day. The experiment drew extensive coverage worldwide.[10]

He was co-editor, with writer Etgar Keret, of a new international cultural venture aiming to mix literature and cinema in a new format.[11]

On April 2013 Alfon became the founding editor of “Alaxon”, an online magazine in Hebrew, ending his tenure as its editor in chief in December 2014.

His debut thriller novel was published in English as A Long Night in Paris in 2019.

On 16 September 2020, Dov Alfon was appointed editor-in-chief and head of editorial strategy of the French newspaper Libération.[12][13]

• Winner of the CWA International Dagger Award 2019[14]
• Recipient of the Marianne award 2019 for the best thriller published in France that year.[15]
• Recipient of the Peace Through Media Award 2011 from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting, London [16]
• Jury chairman, Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, 2009 (awarded to Haruki Murakami)
• Ophir Prize nominee for best TV Cultural show (with editor Irit Dolev), 2005, 2006, 2008
• Gold Medal in the magazine category from the American Illustrators Society (1997, with Israeli artist Hanoch Piven).
• Editor of the Year Award, the Israeli Press Association (1994, 1996)