Monday, June 15, 2009

Jim Axel

I'm a little late on the draw on this one, but I would have been remiss to not mention it at all. If you're over 25 and you grew up in Atlanta, you'll remember WAGA's Jim Axel. He was an Atlanta television icon, much like Ken Cook is today. He was THE ANCHORMAN in town and much of my perception of what news was about came from Jim.

I never worked with him. He left WAGA in 1996 and I started there in 2000, but I did work with Amanda, Russ, Ken and Ken who all talk about Jim at the end of this piece. It isn't totally out of the ordinary for Amanda to cry on camera, but pretty much every time she does, she has good reason and seeing her cry always tears me up for some reason. I wouldn't call her an overly emotional person, just an emotionally honest person.

In any case, Jim Axel is dying of lung cancer. Back in the day, everyone who worked in television news smoked. Even when I started, the images of editors huddled in editing suites hovering over cellulose with cigarettes hanging from their mouths were still fresh. I smoked. My boss smoked. The director smoked. Eventually, I quit smoking and joined the new generation of professionals, who perhaps smoke in secret, but not at work. But some of those old school television news people still remain and still smoke and Jim was one of these. Well, it's caught up with him.

Here's is the moving tribute, produced by Executive Producer Marc Shavin who actually left his office and went to Florida for this piece, but who had the good sense to let Jim tell his own story, rather than muddle it with a voiceover.

It's a pure honest piece about what life looks like in hindsight, given to us from the man that told us what was news for over 30 years.



My only critique- I think that they would have been better served by not using cancer clips for his "career" montage. It would have perhaps been better to show clips of memorable stories. I know they did some of this later, but the cancer stuff seemed a little heavy handed and it didn't really serve to stir up the sense of nostalgia that would have given the viewer greater emotional involvement.

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