Atlanta Fox affiliate Fox 5 has dismantled its vaunted I-Team, a fixture in Atlanta journalism for 48 years.
On Wednesday morning, WAGA-TV management let go two on-air investigative reporters Johnny Edwards and Dana Fowle, as well as photojournalist and producer A.J. Willen. The biographies for Edwards and Fowle were wiped from the Fox 5 website by the evening. Their work-related Facebook pages were also erased.
“I am nothing but grateful for my time with Fox,” Willen, who joined the I-Team in 2013, wrote on his LinkedIn page Wednesday. “It fills my heart to reflect on the impact we made as a team. So many memories forged by the privilege we earn grinding the front lines of history. The best team.”
A Fox 5 spokesperson did not respond to a text seeking comment Wednesday evening.
The I-Team began in 1977 as “The Special Unit” when broadcast TV was raking in money and investigative journalism was on the rise following Watergate. Although Atlanta news stations had previously employed investigative reporters, WAGA-TV marketed a full-fledged team. The original reporters were Richard Belcher and Jim Axel.
Credit: WAGA
Credit: WAGA
“It’s like a death in the family,” said Belcher, who spent many years at WAGA-TV before jumping to No. 1 station Channel 2 Action News (WSB-TV) in 1990, where he worked until he retired in 2022.
Belcher said he was proud of his work at WAGA, including the time he revealed a cheating scandal in which Atlanta Police Department favorites were fed answers for promotional exams.
“It was a chance to do journalism on a substantive level,” Belcher said. “It was the type of work that could take weeks and months.”
Jeff Hullinger, a veteran Atlanta broadcaster who worked at WAGA for nearly 20 years, said there was a running joke in the 1980s: “The worst news a DeKalb County commissioner could receive was Richard Belcher was in the lobby waiting to talk to you.”
The end of the I-Team, Hullinger said, is “the end of an era. They had a tremendous amount of power. They did big stories and smaller stories equally, and all had impact. Their stories always made the community better.”
Even after WAGA-TV switched from a CBS affiliation to Fox in 1994, management continued to invest in and promote the I-Team, which over its time featured just seven reporters — all with lengthy tenures — including Dale Russell, Randy Travis and Virginia Ellis, who was replaced in 1999 by Fowle.
Russell retired in 2023, replaced by Edwards, who was lured to WAGA from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigation team. After Travis took a buyout last year, Fox 5 did not replace him.
“We changed laws,” said Travis, who was on the I-Team for 30 years. “Our stories led to prosecutions that people in prison. It was the pinnacle of my journalism career.”
Russell, who was on the I-Team for 38 years, said “the investigative unit didn’t just report stories. It set the standard for Atlanta journalism. It held the powerful accountable and gave a voice to the voiceless. It will be greatly missed.”
The I-Team over the years won multiple Emmy, Edward R. Murrow and Peabody awards.
Russell pocketed a Peabody in 1999 after showing how customs agents at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport were singling out minority travelers for searches. In 2018, the I-Team won a Peabody for Travis’ report that detailed how police used “a quick, cheap way to analyze suspicious substances in the field,” and how its use led to many false arrests.
Some recent investigations that received heavy traffic on the I-Team’s YouTube page include an Edwards investigation into a DeKalb County home used heavily for parties and Fowle’s look into a property owner beating the city of Atlanta in court over a disputed $81,000 water bill.
Deep-dive broadcast journalism in Atlanta is not dead. ABC affiliate WSB-TV, NBC affiliate 11Alive (WXIA-TV) and WANF-TV, the CBS affiliate that will go independent in August, still maintain investigative teams.
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