Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene
Pareene in New York, May 2012
Born	United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Writer, journalist, blogger, editor

Alex Pareene is an American writer and journalist. He was the editor of the online news magazine Gawker.

Early in his life, Pareene lived in South Minneapolis and attended South High School, where he wrote for the school's newspaper and took part in the extracurricular theater program. Pareene began his career writing a blog entitled "Buck Hill." In January 2006 he started writing for the sardonic Washington, D.C. political gossip blog Wonkette, then a part of Gawker Media, before he moved to their main web property Gawker in October 2007. In April 2010 he left Gawker to write about politics for the online news magazine Salon. In their farewell post, the Gawker staff wrote of Pareene, "His writing is hysterical, his voice is unique, and his political mind is finely tuned into the idiocies and hypocrisies of our crumbling democracy." He later joined First Look Media in hopes to launch the blog Racket with Matt Taibbi. In January 2015, he rejoined Gawker Media.

At Salon, the rise of personalities who dominate the 24-hour news cycle continued to be one of Pareene's mainstay concerns.Salon publishes a yearly list composed by Pareene called the Hack 30: The Worst Pundits in America, a list of people described as "the most predictable, banal, intellectually dishonest and all-around hacky newspaper columnists, cable news shouting heads and political opinion-mongers working today." The Columbia Journalism Review described the list as a "fun-to-read, blunt, stick-it-in-deep-and-twist-it list of mostly old-world print-y pundits." The list became so popular in media circles that Pareene began composing essay-length posts throughout the year about each person featured in the list to expound upon what he considered to be their hackery.

Pareene has been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, known for his show Celebrity Apprentice where he uses the catchphrase "You're Fired!" to dismiss celebrity contestants competing for charity. At varying times Pareene has referred to Trump as a "fictional television clown tycoon," "a living freak show" and "a weird attention-hungry idiot."