Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas began his journalism career at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also learned about NABJ through Black radio pioneer John L. Hanson. After graduating with a Bachelor of Journalism in Broadcast News, Douglas began his career in the Mississippi Delta.

He then pursued his master’s at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. After reporting from Capitol Hill for the Medill News Service and graduation, Douglas continued his career in the Midwest in Topeka, Kansas.

His local broadcast career throughout the Deep South as a reporter soon expanded into freelance journalism in Atlanta, Ga. As a freelancer, Douglas worked at WXIA-TV, WSB-TV, the Weather Channel, and cable newscast of The Gwinnett Daily Post in Lawrenceville, Ga.

After additional years of freelancing in Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth, Douglas had the opportunity to launch a broadcasting major at Florida Memorial College (now University), a small HBCU in the Miami area.

His teaching career included visiting positions at California Polytechnic State University, Florida A&M University, and Jackson State University, where he launched its first weekday student newscast. While teaching, Douglas continued to freelance, including Nightly Business Report, and serving as a Website Editor/Reporter at his hometown newspaper the Lufkin Daily News.

Douglas’s involvement with NABJ began as an undergraduate where he was selected for an NABJ Internship. He also earned the first NABJ Student Broadcast Award for his master’s broadcast magazine story on AIDS in Chicago.

Throughout his professional career, Douglas has served as an unofficial mentor for the convention projects, as well as a mentor for the launch of the NABJ Public Relations Student Project. He produced the 2014 NABJ Florida A&M University Short Course while a professor at the university. And for the 2018 NABJ Convention in Detroit, Douglas produced the Master Class with Tyler Perry and the highly talked about “When Art Meets Activism” with holiday heavy hitters Tichina Arnold, George Tillman Jr., and DeVon Franklin.