Dov Alfon

'Dov Alfon' (Hebrew: דב אלפון‎) (born 1961) is an Israeli journalist and editor. He was the chief editor of Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, Israel's largest publishing house. From 2008 to 2011, he was editor in chief of Haaretz, one of the most respected newspapers in the world.^[1][2] He is currently the CEO of Storyvid.io,^[3] a non-profit cultural venture aiming to bridge between literature and new media.^[4] He is also the editor in chief of Alaxon,^[5] an Hebrew digital journal for Science and the Arts.

Biography

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(Magazine) 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.

Media career

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 Ha'aretz 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.

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

Awards

Recipient of the Peace Through Media Award 2011 from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting, London ^[12]

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)

References