Who is Doug Thompson?

Honestly, I have no idea (although for starters, this Doug Thompson

says he's not this Doug Thompson:

Who appears to be the same as this guy.)

But what do I know? Nothing. Until July 16 (when a friend emailed me and asked about a story he'd written) I had never heard of Doug Thompson, and never read his site. This started as a small fit of curiosity aroused by "George Harleigh" -- because I'm somewhat of a history buff, and I felt a bit embarrassed by my ignorance of a famous man. Now, it's gotten so strange and involved that I feel I'm under a bit of a duty to find out precisely who's who.

I thought I should check out his official biography:

Doug Thompson realized the value of capturing history 46 years ago as a 10-year-old schoolboy in Farmville, Virginia, when the community, caught up in a fight over integration, closed the public schools and opened an all-white private school.

Thompson wrote about his experiences and submitted his story and photos to The Farmville Herald,the local newspaper. He developed other photo stories for the paper and a journalism career was born.
When his family relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountain community of Floyd, the 14-year-old Thompson took his photographs and stories to Pete Hallman, editor of the weekly Floyd Press. Hallman encouraged the young man to continue writing and taking photos, teaching him the ins and outs of the newspaper business.

Thompson went on to join the staff of The Roanoke Times where he covered the police beat, emerging racial turmoil in the city and tackled other tough subjects. His story about a young girl who obtained an abortion (illegal at the time) won the top feature writing award from the Virginia Press Association. Another, about street racers in the city, won a feature writing award while his coverage of the murder of a Southwest Roanoke couple and the abduction and rape of their teenaged daughters brought the top news writing award from the association

After moving on to The Telegraph in Alton, Illinois, Thompson continued to win awards for writing and photography, capturing the Illinois Associated Press Managing Editors top prizes for news, feature and column writing as well as first place awards from the Illinois Press Association.

The first journalism award I won, a Feature Writing First Place from The Virginia Press Association in 1967, came from a story about an anonymous teenager in Roanoke who obtained an abortion that was illegal at the time. I've won more than 30 journalism awards over the last 38 years and about half of them for stories that depended heavily on anonymous sources.

Does anyone know or care what sort of award he won? Today's resume refers to a "Feature Writing First Place" award from The Virginia Press Association, but here's Thompson's account:

In 1967, I interviewed a teenage girl who sought out an abortion (illegal at the time). She talked about her experiences in graphic detail and I put those details in the story which sparked a heated debate among editors at the paper. Howard Eanes, the assistant managing editor, did not want to publish it.

"This is a family newspaper," he argued. "We don't print sensationalist material like this." Eanes also said he doubted the story was true.

Woody Middleton, the managing editor, agreed with Eanes so I took the story to executive editor Barton Morris who read it, liked it, and overruled Eanes and Middleton. The story ran on the front of the local news section on a Sunday and sparked widespread community uproar along with a visit from the Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney who wanted to slap me in jail for daring to write a story about a young woman who, at the time, committed a felony by having an abortion.

I refused to cooperate, the paper backed me, and the furor died down. Three months later, the Virginia Press Association honored the story with a first prize in the annual state news writing competition. I was right but my relationship with both my managing editor and his assistant went downhill from there.

I called the Virginia Press Association and was told their records don't go back that far, but the guy I spoke to was very polite, said he'd check and email me if he found anything.

Back to the biography:

Thompson took a sabbatical from newspapers in 1981 and moved to Washington to work on Capitol Hill. He served as press secretary for two Congressman (Paul Findley of Illinois and Manuel Lujan of New Mexico) and then Chief of Staff before joining the House Committee on Science & Technology as special assistant to the ranking minority member.. From 1987-1992, Thompson served as Vice President for Political Programs for The National Association of Realtors. During that stint he became involved in campaign finance issue and was a founding member of the Project for Comprehensive Campaign Reform.

I'm curious, though, why the current biographical resume doesn't mention being "Chief of Staff" for Congressman Dan Burton? (This is taken from in the now-disappeared biography listed at something called the Save America Foundation:)

Thompson took a sabbatical from newspapers in 1981 and moved to Washington and work on Capitol Hill, where he served as press secretary to two members of Congress (Rep. Paul Findley of Illinois and Rep. Manuel Lujan of New Mexico), Chief of Staff to a third (Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana) and then Special Assistant to the Ranking Member of the House Space, Science and Technology Committee (Lujan again).

I'm also wondering why, when Thompson excoriates Dan Burton for sexual misbehavior, he doesn't mention that he was once his Chief of Staff. Isn't that something the readers might want to know? I'm not saying he wasn't Burton's Chief of Staff, and I'm not about to check every claim. I've spent enough time as it is. But in logic, either he was or he was not. I'll just assume he was. But why the scrubbing of the reference?

NOTE: I don't have time to flush this out, but there seems to be another Doug Thompson in Washington.

Back to the current resume:

But journalism remained Thompson's true love and returned to his roots as a free-lance writer and photographer. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Esquire, Life, Look, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Paris Match, AFP, the Associated Press and Reuters.

I suspect no one does, so no one will.

But there's plenty more.

Unlike Al Gore, Doug Thompson actually did help invent the Internet:

During his stint at the House Committee on Science and Technology, Thompson worked on transfer of what was then DARPANet from the Department of Defense to the National Science Foundation, the beginnings of the Internet. Sensing the coming growth of the Internet, he started a web hosting and design company in 1994 and that same year launched Capitol Hill Blue as the web's first political news site.

Besides Blue, Thompson publishes a number of other web sites. He also owns Blue Ridge Creative, a photography, video production and digital imaging company in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia as well as web hosting operations. In 2001.

The Thompsons left Washington in 2004 and moved to a hilltop retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. He returns to Washington once a year to speak to journalism students at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism and still has business interests in the National Capital Region but his days as a Washingtonian are over. Despite his success in new media, Thompson remains a newspaperman at heart and lives by the creed that it is the role of a newspaperman to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." In 2004 he returned to his newspaper roots by joining the staff of his hometown paper as a sports photographer and reporter covering the county government and courthouse beats.

All things considered, should "William D. McTavish" simply fire "Doug Thompson"?

It's not for me to decide.