ATL Report – Atlanta News and Gossip

Jim Axel, a veteran WAGA-TV anchor for 34 years, died Saturday after a long battle with lung cancer, according to WAGA-TV.

Axel worked at WAGA-TV from 1962 until he retired in 1996.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago, the WAGA-TV story said. And he credited his wife for holding up as well as he did in an interview with his former station last year.

“I would hate to be where I am without her,” he said at the time. “She’s been wonderful. She makes sure the family gets through it. I can’t tell you enough what it has meant to have her. She’s supportive. She’s demanding. She’ll tell me what I need to have done whether I want to do it or not.”

Doug Richards, who works at WXIA-TV but spent many years at WAGA-TV, offered kind words about Axel on his Live Apartment Fire blog:

Axel was smart, passionate, occasionally surly and uncompromising in his standards of journalism. He had a twenty-plus year head-start on me, career-wise. If he could do it, I figured — …