This week, WGCL announced a partnership with WQXI / 790 “The Zone” to provide sports coverage for the television station. WGCL news director Steve Schwaid answered some e-mailed questions about it below. First, this excerpt from a WGCL news release: “This is a successful partnership for Atlanta sports fans and WGCL-TV,” said Kirk Black, Senior [...]
Archive for October, 2009
29 Oct
Three reasons to love the Atlanta media
I find “the Real Housewives of Atlanta” to be mostly annoying. Yet when the missus puts it on TV, it becomes a distraction because the locale is so familiar. Just as I’m averting my eyes from the irritating dialogue and the concocted plot lines, I’ll spot a landmark. As I’m rolling my eyes at the [...]
25 Oct
Why “I don’t watch”
At a party last weekend, I met a young lawyer who works as a public defender in metro Atlanta. Politely, she asked if I had an occupation. I gave her the shorthand: “Local TV news guy.” (She was dressed as a zombie; I was dressed as the Ghost of Americana. You kinda had to be [...]
22 Oct
The sport of breaking news
Tuesday, Atlanta TV crews gathered at the DeKalb County jail to witness a man submitting himself for arrest for causing a fatal accident. The accident, days earlier, was horrific. It killed three people and injured six more in a van pool during rush hour on the Stone Mountain freeway. The TV crews had been waiting [...]
20 Oct
WAGAzine
In November 1981, six-year-old John Anthony Gillis had begun to play instruments (he later became known as Jack White of the White Stripes). Barack Obama was midway into his undergraduate degree at Columbia. Valerie Bertinelli was on the cover of People. Ronald Reagan was on the cover of Time. Michael Jackson was on the cover [...]
15 Oct
Satellite shot
Once, while sitting in a live truck at the Douglas County Courthouse in Douglasville Georgia, I overheard a woman approaching with her child. The woman was showing the child the logo on the truck, indicating the presence of local television. In reverent tones, she explained to the youngster that they were on-scene covering a news [...]
13 Oct
Big in Japan
“We’ll just strap a safety harness on the photographer, and put him out on the skid of the helicopter with a camera.” This remarkable and seemingly unthinkable stroke of genius, probably uttered over drinks shared by a TV photographer and a helicopter pilot, jump-started a TV news niche that ultimately formed the career of WXIA [...]
11 Oct
Bench player
It started with a tip in my inbox. The writer was a longtime denizen of the Gwinnett County Courthouse. The tip directed me to check the status of Jim Oxendine, Senior Superior Court Judge. The tip said that I would find that he’d been told by the other judges to take a hike because he’d [...]
10 Oct
Clarification / Zombiefication
Oops. While covering the Jimmy Carter museum event September 30, I somehow overlooked the on-scene presence of veteran TV photog Everett Bevelle. Bevelle is (pretty sure) the only remaining newsman at WGCL who dates back to its founding newscast, back in the WGNX / “News at 10″ days of the early 90s. This means that [...]
8 Oct
Multitasking multimedia multiplatformer
Last weekend, I had occasion to introduce a young man named Chris Sweigart to a bunch of old, grizzled TV goons. “Sweigart is a reporter and director of social media at WXIA.” The introduction was repeatedly good for a guffaw or a snort. I suspect only a handful of other news folk in America, if [...]
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