Capitol Hill Blue

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Doug Thompson
Founder & Publisher
Capitol Hill Blue

Doug Thompson sold his first story and photograph to a newspaper 48 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.

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.

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

Thompson took a sabbatical from newspapers in 1981 and moved to Washington to work on Capitol Hill, starting as a press secretary and working his way up to chief of staff before coming special assistant to the Ranking Minority Member of the House Science and Technology Committee. While serving in his Capitol Hill posts, Thompson served as a writer for the Voices for Victory program of the 1984 Reagan-Bush Presidential Campaign and as a field consultant for the National Republican Congressional Committee. In 1986, he took a leave of absence from his Capitol Hill post to serve as communications consultant to the campaign of Amory Houghton (R-NY). He taught political communications at the American Campaign Academy in suburban Washington and consulted on a number of other Congressional and statewide campaigns.

From 1987-1992, Thompson served as Vice President for Political Programs for The National Association of Realtors, running the nation's largest political action committee, issues mobilization program and independent expenditure campaigns. During that stint he became involved in campaign finance issues and was a founding board member of the Project for Comprehensive Campaign Reform. He later served as a senior communications consultant for The Eddie Mahe Company, a strategic business communications company and political consulting firm based in Washington.

But journalism remained Thompson's true love and he returned to his roots as a free-lance writer and photographer when The Eddie Mahe Company merged with the law firm of Foley & Lardner.

In 1994 he launched Capitol Hill Blue as the web's first political news site. He also started a web hosting company, web design business and communications consulting firm.

The Thompsons left Washington in 2004 and retired 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. In retirement, he photographs high school sports and covers courts and county government for his hometown paper.

Thompson is also active in community service, serving as a member of the board of advisors of the New River Valley Alcohol Safety Action Program (ASAP) and a mentor to young photographers for The National Association of Press Photographers.

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."