WAGA Atlanta investigative reporter Randy Travis and medical reporter Beth Galvin have taken buyout offers at the station. Travis joined the station in 1990, when it was a CBS affiliate. Galvin joined it in 1996, after it had switched to Fox.
Travis is 62, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Galvin is 58.
Before finding his way to WAGA, Travis was a reporter at WMC Memphis, WYFF Greenville and WMAZ Macon. He got his start in media as a sportswriter for his hometown newspaper, the Athens Banner-Herald.
Travis joined the station’s investigative team in 1994, and won a Peabody Award, for an investigation into police officers using a flawed drug test in the field that led to a bunch of false positives, in 2018. That story was entitled “$2 Tests: Bad Arrests.”
Travis shared on Facebook, “There’s one thing I’ve learned working 45 years in the news business — 42 in local TV news — it’s this: nothing good ever lasts. There’s always an end.
“And so it is with my career at Fox 5.
“On Tuesday, I accepted a generous offer and retired from the station. I was there nearly 35 years. Each one of them wasn’t just good. They were great.”
He was diagnosed as a diabetic at age 29, but has nonetheless completed dozens of marathons.
In 2015, Galvin donated a kidney, and reported on her experience for WAGA.
“What a privilege it has been to get to tell your medical stories for the last 24 years,” she shared on Facebook. “I started out at FOX 5 as a general assignment reporter, and then gradually leaned more and more into the medical stories which really gave me a chance to stretch my own reporting skills. By 2000, I was covering medicine full time, and I have loved it every day since then.”
She concluded by crediting photojournalist Eli Jordan. “I am so proud of the stories we covered, and I hope you found them helpful and inspired as I was by the people who shared their stories. What a beautiful, amazing ride it has been,” Galvin said.
The Journal-Constitution said Randall Rinehart, an editor at the station for 26 years, also took a buyout.
