In TV land, it seems everybody but WAGA got caught flat-footed on the Mike Evans resignation from the DOT board. Evans quit after revealing he’d developed a “personal relationship” with the board’s newest hire, commissioner Gena Abraham. Unlike other stations, WAGA actually covered the meeting with reporters Dale Russell and Paul Yates. WAGA did an excellent job of capturing the discomfort and awkwardness of the whole situation, without exploiting or sensationalizing it. WXIA and WSB were forced to use written statements from Evans– statements, which turned out to be verbatim quotes of material WAGA had on-camera.
The story is significant because Evans and Abraham came into the sights of the squirrelly House Speaker Glenn Richardson during the recently-completed session. The fact that they survived it was a political victory for them (and the Governor, who was absent yesterday). The fact that their political survival unraveled because of an apparent romance was– awkward. And worthy of the headlines it got.
Nice scoop by Russell and Yates, who broke the story at noon.
And nice headline in today’s Augusta Chronicle: “DOT Leader Quits to Pursue Colleague.”