Doug Merlino
Encyclopedia
Personal History
Merlino grew up in Seattle, WashingtonSeattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
and attended the Lakeside School
Lakeside School
Lakeside School is a private/independent school located in the Haller Lake neighborhood at the north city limits of Seattle, Washington, USA, for grades 5–12....
. He studied government at Claremont McKenna College
Claremont McKenna College
Claremont McKenna College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college and a member of the Claremont Colleges located in Claremont, California. The campus is located east of Downtown Los Angeles...
in Los Angeles, and received graduate degrees in journalism and international affairs from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He lived in
Budapest, Hungary, where he worked as an editor at the Budapest Business Journal. He is married and now lives in the Hell's Kitchen
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City between 34th Street and 59th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River....
neighborhood of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Professional Work
Merlino has worked for publications including SlateSlate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
, Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, Men's Journal
Men's Journal
Men's Journal is an American men's lifestyle magazine focused on outdoor recreation and comprising editorials on the outdoors, environmental issues, health and fitness, style and fashion, and "gear". It is owned by Jann Wenner of Wenner Media....
, the Budapest Business Journal, and the Seattle Times. He reported on post-genocide reconciliation in Rwanda
Rwanda
Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
for the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
show Frontline/World.
Merlino's first book, The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White, was published by Bloomsbury USA in January 2011. The nonfiction book tells the story of a basketball team that Merlino played on as a 14-year-old in the 1986. The team, an integration experiment, mixed privileged white players from Merlino's private school with African-American kids from Seattle's Central Area. The boys won an AAU
Amateur Athletic Union
The Amateur Athletic Union is one of the largest non-profit volunteer sports organizations in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs.-History:The AAU was founded in 1888 to...
championship that season, and the organizers began a program to enroll some of the black players in private schools.
Several years later Merlino learned that Tyrell Johnson, one of his African-American teammates, had been murdered and dismembered. This spurred him to track down the remaining players to find out what happened to them, and how they looked back at their team. They include a hedge fund manager, a Pentecostal preacher, a prosecutor, a frequently incarcerated cocaine addict, a winemaker, and a street hustler. The resulting book tells the story of these individuals, but also focuses on the shifting dynamics of race and class, manhood, education and gentrification over the last thirty years. Many of the players and coaches from the team reunited in January 2011 for a televised panel discussion that coincided with the release of the book.
Awards
Merlino received the 2011 Washington State Book AwardWashington State Book Award
The Washington State Book Awards are presented annually in recognition of notable books written by Washington authors in the previous year.This literary awards program was established in 1967 as the Governor's Writers Awards. The program was based at the Washington State Library in Olympia...
in Biography/Memoir for The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White.