DOUGLAS ALDEN

Douglas Alden (né Warshaw) is a writer/director/producer who’s been in and out of the journalism, tech and various creative worlds for a very long time.

As a television programmer, producer, writer and director, Douglas has won 3 Emmy Awards and received 12 Emmy nominations for his documentary and long-form feature work at ESPN, NBC Olympics, ABC Sports, and Classic Sports Network (now ESPN Classic). 

In December of 2023 he moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, to cover life on the home front during the country’s war against Hamas. The result is the online publication “Life During Wartime: Dispatches from the Home Front,” which features video and essay portraits of Israelis of all backgrounds working to keep themselves together in order to keep their country together. (His initial essay describing the project can be found here.)

Most recently prior to that, he was the Creator, Writer & Executive Producer of ESPN’s serialized, “1927: The Diary of Myles Thomas," a historical novel described by many as, "Ball Four meets the Great Gatsby."

Written in the form of a diary authored by a pitcher on the fabled 1927 "Murderers' Row" New York Yankees, the novel explores the real-life nexus between baseball, jazz and the criminal underworld that existed at the height of the Roaring Twenties, and details the social, racial and sexual insanity brought on by Prohibition.

The novel—and the accompanying online presentation, featuring stunning photos and original artwork—chronicles the lives and adventures of Jazz Age entertainers and musicians, baseball immortals, bootleggers, gamblers, murderers, and Wall Street swindlers. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Artie Shaw and Barbara Stanwyck, all come together in Myles Thomas's intimate exploration of youth, greatness, morality, race, sex, and the meaning of heroes.

“1927: The Diary of Myles Thomas” can be experienced at ESPN.com/1927.

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Douglas’s professional career has been all about the marriage of content and technology:

He began his television career in 1979 with ABC News in the Political & Special Events Unit, where he worked on the coverage of the 1980 Presidential Campaign, the launch of the first Space Shuttle, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and the live late night news broadcast Roone Arledge began as “America Held Hostage,” and which would become Nightline. 

In 1982 he moved on to cover the sports world as Dick Schaap’s producer and production partner for the next two decades. At ABC Sports, ESPN and Classic Sports Network, Douglas produced, co-wrote, directed and/or executive produced over a dozen documentaries. And at NBC Sports & Olympics from 1990-1993, he directed, wrote and produced more than 30 features, including extended profiles, and investigative and humor pieces for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.

Douglas was a founding member of Classic Sports Network, where he served as the network’s Senior Vice President for Programming & Production from 1994 through 2000, starting six months before the launch of the network through its sale to ESPN. At Classic he oversaw the production and editorial of hundreds of hours of original documentary, entertainment and studio programming, and co-developed the on-air look of the network. An innovator in documentary programming, Douglas and his team created a unique style of longform hybrid documentary-rebroadcasts; and co-created with NFL Films the Emmy nominated “Replay” series, which recreated epic 1960s and 1970s games by combining NFL Films footage with archival radio calls and television broadcast audio.

In the digital world since 2000, Douglas has co-founded and repositioned companies, and created innovative marketing campaigns that garnered both press and audience impressions for HBO (“The Sopranos” and HBO Boxing), Showtime (multiple original series), E! Online, Victoria’s Secret, and Gagosian Gallery, among others. His professional service groups created and launched the first interactive video applications used by HBO and Showtime.

In 2005 Douglas co-founded Motionbox.com, a personal video-sharing service and community website in the forefront of the user-generated video revolution. The company was sold to HP in 2010 and became the video backbone of HP’s consumer photo and video site, SnapFish.com. Under his leadership as Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, Motionbox was the first user-generated video site to partner with a major media company, enabling NBC Universal’s Owned & Operated television stations to combine their assets with user-generated videos, and safely expand their brands into the exploding world of user-generated video on the web.

As the Chief Digital Officer for Maxim Magazine in 2008, Douglas tried in vain to get the Magazine and Maxim.com to focus on the emerging digital universe, especially mobile advertising technologies and mobile publishing platforms.

As a digital media consultant Douglas has successfully worked with clients as varied as HBO, Showtime, ESPN.com, the U.S. Olympic Committee, College Sports Television, Gagosian Gallery, and private equity firms specializing in media and communications investments, including the Quadrangle Group and Allen & Co.

Douglas’s writings on media, technology, digital trends, sports, race, journalism and theater have appeared in GQ Magazine, the New York Times and Fortune Magazine (under the byline Douglas Alden Warshaw). Much of his work—print, video and radio—along with his musings about media theories and their practical applications, can be found at Alden.Media/articles.

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Douglas has an A.B. from Princeton University in Politics (Magna Cum Laude). He lives in New York City with his wife, Melissa Lazarov (formerly the Global Director of Gagosian Gallery) and their two fabulous daughters.