Tv Anchor Doug Weathers Showed Us What Quality Journalism Looks Like

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Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Madam Speaker, retired Savannah TV anchorman Doug Weathers remains one of the most recognizable people in the community. He's still remembered and beloved. I believe he could step into a studio tomorrow to do the local news and again dominate the ratings. Walking into a room with Weathers, who still looks fit, has great hair and bursts with high energy at age 91, is like walking down a street in Memphis with Elvis. People shower him with shouts of `Hey Doug,' and they want to bend his ear about something. And Doug, being Doug, will stop and listen, no matter whether it's to hear a story about a lost dog, a widow's prize fruitcake recipe, someone who's down on his or her luck or a gardener's giant zucchini. Weathers was very much the king of local TV news and he had the competition all shook up during his 41 years on the air here. The Georgia Association of Broadcasters recently honored the grand man of the local airways by naming him to its hall of fame. No on-air broadcaster in the state was more deserving of this honor, as Weathers was the face and the voice of two TV stations here during his tenure--WTOC (twice) and WJCL. Former WTOC general manager Bill Cathcart tells a story about how he once hired a consultant to rank every anchor in Savannah and list them according to their popularity. The consultant handed him a list with a folded piece of paper attached to the top. When he started reading the report, he didn't see Weathers' name. The consultant told him to unfold the paper. Doug was so far ahead of his competition that he earned his own page.

Among the many reasons that people in Southeast Georgia loved Doug was that he reflected them and their values. He didn't preach, because most of his audience got their fill of that on Sundays. He delivered the news straight and unfiltered. He was humble. He never failed to remember that he and his news staff were invited guests into people's homes. Too few people in the news business know that lesson today. Doug was a showman who liked `hokey' and refused to take himself too seriously. He was fond of calling those news programs that featured grim-faced pontificating prattlers `tube-coolers', in reference to scores of viewers at home hitting their off buttons to turn their attention to something else. Weathers was not too big to do any parade or make any appearance. One of his favorites was speaking at career days in local schools where he told star-struck kids that he got his start at WTOC doing drudge work like splicing film and sweeping up the studio for 90 cents an hour. He was big on getting a college education, even though he himself wasn't a stellar student. ``I didn't graduate `cum laude.' I graduated `thank the Lordy' '' was a favorite punchline.

Weathers also burned his own shoe leather hitting the streets to report the latest crime story, hospital hijinks or political scandal, most often scooping his rivals. No story was beneath him. He respected his viewers. Perhaps his greatest strength was his ability to attract, mentor and keep talent, pros like weatherman Pat Prokop, sports anchor Rick Snow, co-anchor Angela Gale and a bevy of fine reporters like Mike Manhatton, Jim Carswell, Janice McDonald, Jim Hildebrandt, George Murphy, Avis Blackmon, Jody Chapin, Dawn Baker, Ron Wallace and Johnny `Get hooked on fishing, not drugs' Cole. Of course, these are also among the many reasons why this newest Georgia broadcasting hall-of- famer probably couldn't find a seat anchoring one of today's network snooze slots. He wasn't elitist. He kept his opinions to himself. He didn't make stuff up. He didn't make his viewers wretch or want to cough up a lung after one of his newscasts. He didn't hurl insults or twist the news to support a personal agenda. If more of the talking heads on the national news programs were more like Savannah's own Doug Weathers, they would gain more trust and viewers and look less like people who were talking out of a different part of their anatomies.

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