About Doug
My Walk
For most of my adult life, I made a living asking questions.
I spent nearly twenty years working as a broadcast journalist — anchoring, reporting, and managing newsrooms in places like Detroit, Rochester (Minnesota), Lawton (Oklahoma), Albuquerque, Baton Rouge, and eventually Wilmington, North Carolina. I covered elections, crime, hurricanes, and the everyday stories that reveal who we really are.
As a managing editor in Baton Rouge, I helped lead wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath — an experience that permanently reshaped how I understand power, suffering, and who gets left behind.
I loved the work. I loved the urgency. I loved telling people’s stories.
And then, in 2010, everything changed.
The New Perspective
After being awarded custody of my son, I walked away from journalism. It was an obvious choice. Television news demands long, unpredictable hours — the kind that don’t work when you’re the parent waiting for the school bus in the afternoon. Still, obvious choices come with real consequences.
I didn’t just leave a career. I lost an identity.
I went from work that required creativity and judgment to jobs that simply fit the schedule. Jobs I could have done straight out of high school. Jobs that paid very little, but allowed me to be home when my son needed me.
I loved those years with him — waking him up, putting him to bed, helping with homework (except math… I will never understand new math).
But they were also some of the hardest years of my life.
For the first time, my son and I lived below the poverty line — not as a metaphor, but as a reality. It was a blow to my ego and pride. But it also became an education no classroom could have given me.
I learned that poor people aren’t lazy. I met people working multiple jobs who still couldn’t get ahead. I learned that government assistance doesn’t make you less human or less worthy. I learned how much we mistake comfort for value. I learned that generosity doesn’t depend on how much you have — sometimes it’s clearest among those with the least.
And I learned what may be the hardest lesson God ever teaches any of us: sometimes, before you can reflect His love, you have to learn how to receive it.
We survived those years because people showed up — some believers, some not. Christians do not have a monopoly on compassion. They were friends, neighbors, family, and more often than you might expect, complete strangers. They weren’t asked. They didn’t expect anything in return. They simply came through. And regardless of what they personally believed, I always knew Who sent them.
Still Asking the Questions
I am not a pastor, and certainly no spiritual authority. I’m still a guy who asks questions — and believes asking them matters. Because what if wrestling with those questions helps give voice to people who too often go unnoticed.
What if together we can reclaim faith as something that moves us toward justice, humility, and responsibility for one another — not fear, dominance, or exclusion?
I’m a political junkie. I’m a journalist at heart. I’m a Christian who believes faith should show up in the real world. And I’m someone who has learned — the hard way — that grace is most visible when systems fail and people choose to care anyway.
If you’re here because you’re angry, disillusioned, hopeful, curious, or just trying to figure out how Jesus still fits into a broken public square — you’re in the right place.
This is my voice.
My hope is that it helps you find yours.