James F. Blue III was an award-winning producer with ABC News Nightline for 12 years, most recently based in the network's London bureau.
In addition to extensive reporting on the war against terrorism and military affairs, he has produced several series, including Heart of Darkness, on the 3.5 million people who have perished in an under-reported African civil war; A Matter of Choice, on gays and lesbians in the U.S.; and America in the Red, on the nation's core economic problems.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Blue reported as part of a unilateral team based in southern Iraq. Since the end of large-scale military combat in Iraq, he has frequently returned to the country, most recently to Baghdad, where he produced a town hall meeting on the country's future with a cross section of Iraqis, including those opposed to the coalition presence there.
In the course of his career, Blue has won two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Batons, an Overseas Press Club Award and six national Emmy Awards. In addition, he has been selected twice as a finalist for the Livingstone Award for Young Journalists.
Before joining Nightline in 1994, Blue spent three years at NBC News as a producer with Today, Now and other broadcasts. Blue began his journalism career as a desk assistant at ABC News in New York in 1990.
Blue is a 1991 graduate of Princeton University, where he studied public policy in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and completed a thesis on the coverage of poverty by the broadcast news networks in the late 1980s. He and his partner, John Rowell, are fathers of two children — a son, Alden, 6, and a daughter, Effie, 5 — and reside in Baltimore, Md.