THE BIG STORY

As Jim Gardner retires, he reflects on 46 years at Action News — and his personal stories that weren’t on air

• By David Gambacorta
• Published Dec 13, 2022

A lone figure loomed near the edge of the pitcher’s mound in Citizens Bank Park, hoping his right arm wouldn’t betray him.

He tried to steady his nerves. He looked put together — mustache expertly trimmed, snowy hair parted just so. He gripped a baseball and reached back.

Ceremonial first pitches rarely carry much suspense. Thousands of fans in the ballpark closely watched this one, though, and cheered wildly when the ball landed in the Phillie Phanatic’s glove before a Sunday afternoon game against the New York Mets in late August.

“Has there been a more beloved newscaster in Philadelphia television history,” thundered Dan Baker, the Phillies’ longtime public address announcer, “than JIM GARDNER?”

Gardner, 74, finds it uncomfortable to be the center of attention, to have strangers share their affection for him. But for 46 years, he has been a constant presence in the living rooms of generations of Philadelphians, next to their dining-room tables, even (ahem) in their bedrooms, calmly explaining what they needed to know about snowstorms, political scandals, global crises.

He is the face of 6abc, if not all of Philadelphia broadcast journalism. In a region that has long been short on famous residents, Gardner is a bona fide celebrity.

“Once you start to take yourself too seriously, you get into trouble. That’s not who I am,” he says. “I’m very invested in the quality of our work, and, over the years, the quality of my work. But, you know, I’m a schmuck, like everybody else.”

And now, the work that has defined Gardner’s life — and, by extension, helped shape how Philadelphians see themselves — is drawing to a close. He will retire from 6abc after a final broadcast on Dec. 21, marking the end of an era when news consumption wasn’t tribal, when the local anchorman was king.

“We might be a dying breed,” says Ukee Washington, who has spent 36 years at CBS3. “But I certainly hope not.”

The ballpark ovation was a bittersweet glimpse of the successes and privileges that Gardner has enjoyed. It was also a reminder that he was inching closer to no longer being able to tell anyone about the big story on Action News.

“What is my life going to be like when I’m not doing that?” he asks on a mid-November evening, inside a spare office at 6abc’s City Avenue headquarters.

“While, on the one hand, I’m looking forward to what comes next, on the other hand, it’s anxiety-provoking. And, yeah, there’s substantial melancholy going on with me. I don’t necessarily let everybody in on that, because why do they care?”

Dammit, Jim. Of course everyone cares.

From Goldman to Gardner

On another late summer afternoon, Gardner sat across from me in the backyard of his Villanova home, and asked why I was there. He didn’t mean it in an impolite way, just: Why would anyone want to write about him? To find the answer, we have to rewind to June 1976 — bell bottoms, bushy sideburns, Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” on the charts — when Gardner began working for 6abc, then primarily known by its call letters, WPVI-TV.

He was still searching for his voice as a broadcaster, the urgent-yet-reassuring cadence that countless journalists would later mimic. In fact, he was still new to being Jim Gardner; just two years earlier, bosses at the abc affiliate in Buffalo suggested that he professionally change his name — Goldman — because they felt the station had too many Jewish reporters. He reluctantly obliged.

Then a new city beckoned.

“I was 27 years old,” Gardner says, “and I was just overwhelmed. … Would I be successful? Would I be able to perform at what I expected the level of ability and competence to be in a city like Philadelphia?”

The city, too, was on unsure footing, steadily losing manufacturing jobs and residents. No building downtown had been constructed higher than the William Penn statue. Frank Rizzo was still mayor; he spoiled the bicentennial celebration that summer by predicting, incorrectly, that thousands of “radicals” would unleash violence in the city.

Gardner, initially tasked with anchoring the noon news, was at City Hall to report on a meeting between Rizzo and a young Sylvester Stallone, there to promote the first Rocky. What Gardner witnessed, though, was a collision between Old Philadelphia — represented by Rizzo’s unchecked police force and strongman persona — and the New Philadelphia that Stallone presented in his film, one where a fighting spirit had more to do with personal resilience than going to war against your neighbors.

In 1977, Gardner was promoted to lead anchor of 6abc’s 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts. As part of the patented-in-Philly Action News format, the station produced more stories, per episode, than its rivals, with a heavy emphasis on crime coverage, and began a decades-long stretch of dominance.

“The salaries were big. The ratings were big,” says Lisa Thomas-Laury, who was hired at 6abc in 1978. “But the journalism was important, too.”

• Gardner became the centerpiece of a team that was rounded out by a rotating cast of supporting players: meteorologists Jim O’Brien and Dave Roberts; sports anchors Don Tollefson, Gary Papa, and Scott Palmer.

When news stories rose to the level of history-in-the-making — the release of U.S. hostages from Iran in 1981; the rise of a democratic Russia in the early 1990s; Pope John Paul II’s visits to Cuba in 1998 and the Holy Land in 2000 — Gardner got to fulfill a college fantasy of being an international correspondent.

“That,” he says, “is something I really cherish.”

The big assignments made Gardner attractive to at least one station that tried to lure him to New York City in the early 1980s. Raised in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he had no interest in returning home.

“New York is the gold ring for some people,” he says. “But not for me. Never was. There was nothing special about New York.”

Gardner discovered that Philadelphians were in awe of broadcast journalists, and had an insatiable curiosity about their lives. When he went on vacation, or took time off for neck surgery, it was reported in The Inquirer. For him to be recognized on the street, off the clock, meant that people would want a handshake, a picture, a conversation — a moment with JIM GARDNER.

“New York is the gold ring for some people. But not for me. Never was. There was nothing special about New York.”

Jim Gardner

Or, as one longtime fan, CNN anchor Jake Tapper, puts it: “The Action News theme song is the soundtrack of my childhood, Jim Gardner the all-seeing, all-knowing benevolent Mayor of Philadelphia.”

But Gardner didn’t quite see himself that way; deep down, he was still Jim Goldman, a quiet family guy who was living a parallel life to a famous news anchor.

A baseball fanatic, Gardner once approached his childhood idol, Mickey Mantle, for an autograph. Mantle stared coldly at Gardner, then in his early 20s, for what seemed like an eternity, humiliating him. It was an instructive experience.

“I have never been a sort of backslapping celebrity,” he says. “It hasn’t been easy for me to learn how to be, not cordial, but to give people the kind of response that they deserve when they’re being friendly. It took me a while, and now it’s fun.”

Even coworkers regarded Gardner as a star — not a diva, but someone whose professionalism and poise occupied a higher plane.

“I did specials, and I’d be on set with Jim,” Thomas-Laury says. “There was a little anxiousness. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted Jim to say something positive afterward. You really yearned for his approval.”

Rick Williams, who began working at 6abc in 1988, felt a sense of trepidation whenever one of his stories was featured on a newscast that Gardner anchored.

“It was his show. He was number one,” Williams explains. “He was one of the best news anchors in the country. He took that seriously. It might have made him a little more tightly wound. But it could be terrifying for a new reporter, like myself.”

Thomas-Laury says she considers Gardner to now be more mellow, more vulnerable.

“That’s her very kind and generous way of saying that I had certain personality deficits years ago,” Gardner says. “As I’ve gotten a bit older, and maybe more mature, more vulnerable, I’ve certainly come to realize that being right isn’t necessarily the most important thing, but being kind and respectful to your colleagues makes you a better team player.”

The hands of fate

He was going to pass out, that much he knew for sure. Gardner was in the middle of a broadcast, and could feel himself losing consciousness. Maybe it was a stroke, he thought.

“I figure, ‘This is not a good thing to do on television,’” he says. “So I’m struggling. And it’s like I have no control over what I’m saying.”

No one on the set of Action News picked up on what was happening. Gardner finished the show, and reviewed footage to see if the sensation that he’d experienced had translated on air. It hadn’t.

Seated next to Gardner during the broadcast was Papa, the sports anchor, who’d spent five years battling prostate cancer that would soon claim his life, in June 2009, at age 54. The terror that Gardner felt: a panic attack.

“It happened repeatedly for months,” Gardner said. “And nobody ever knew. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. And it was all tied into Gary’s illness.”

Papa’s death was a reminder of the breathtaking way that time — hours, days, a career — can suddenly compress and run out. It was not the first time, though, that Gardner had to grapple with the loss of a colleague and friend, to try to conceal raw heartache under an anchor’s composed facade.

In 1983, O’Brien, the square-jawed, good-humored meteorologist, was killed in a skydiving accident at 43. Hours after O’Brien died, Gardner delivered an on-air eulogy.

Staring into the camera, he recalled that during their final conversation, O’Brien had shared a chillingly prescient message about the importance of getting the most out of life: “He said, ‘You just don’t know what fate has in store for you.’”

Gardner kept moving — on to the next story, the next newscast. He hung on to cover the turmoil of Donald Trump’s presidency, the global panic of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then he noticed that many journalists who’d been by his side for decades, like Roberts, Thomas-Laury, and Vernon Odom, had retired.

“I woke up one day, and I was 70-some odd years old now. And it just seemed like, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do,” he says.

Some colleagues, like meteorologist Cecily Tynan, hoped he’d reconsider.

“It’s the elephant in the room,” she says. “You don’t really want to talk about it. You don’t want to get emotional before going on the air.”

In March, Gardner recorded his final 11 p.m. newscast, and handed the reins to Williams, a fellow New Yorker who shares with Gardner a love of Broadway musicals.

“People mention the pressure, filling these big shoes,” Williams says. “I try to compartmentalize it a little bit, because if I really think about it, I might get a little wet under the armpits.”

When Williams began working at 6abc, the anchor chairs were filled mostly by white men.

“We could hope that there would be some diversity, eventually,” he says. “I’m very happy with where we are now. There’s a rainbow of people on the air.”

Like many legacy news organizations, the station has also had to confront the reality that some of its past crime coverage — like a reliance on mug shots, and footage of handcuffed suspects — created harmful perceptions of communities of color.

“Over the course of any period of time you want to take, somebody who might swoop down from Mars to watch our newscast might wonder, ‘Are the only people who are committing violent crimes Black males?’” Gardner says, adding that he objected to the frequent use of so-called perp walks.

“I think we have all learned — The Philadelphia Inquirer included — that diversity and inclusion, in the way we cover news, and who we have on our staffs covering the news, is not just hugely important, but a sacred obligation to what we do, and to the people who watch us.”

The nature of broadcast hasn’t evolved nearly as dramatically, though, as the ways in which people consume the news. No one needs to wait until 6 o’clock to find out if it will rain tomorrow. Appointment TV is as much a thing of the past as the sound of a newspaper hitting a doorstep before sunrise.

Up next

Gardner lived for complex discussions, debating and digesting the news of each day with other journalists, and then channeling it all into concise, insightful copy amid the hum of the 6abc newsroom. The routine is as much a part of his identity, at this point, as the mustache. And since the spring, he’s practiced letting go.

In November, he chatted amiably with a producer, Jamie Pschorr, who ran through the stories that would fill the 6 o’clock news that night: one segment about the upcoming Thanksgiving Day parade, another about a tanker-truck spill in Bethlehem. For much of his career, he prided himself on deciding the direction of each of his broadcasts; now, he was content to let others take the lead.

Gardner led me through 6abc’s sleek, sprawling headquarters. The 69,000-square-foot property, opened in 2009, might as well be called The House That Jim Built, a reflection of the good fortune that both he and the station have enjoyed since he arrived in 1976.

Though he’s reluctant to delve too deeply into mawkish thoughts about what other people think he’s meant to the region, he did notice that a Phillies fan wore a T-shirt emblazoned with no fewer than seven pictures of Gardner’s face to Game 6 of the World Series in Houston, while some T-shirt companies sold “Win it for Jim!” merchandise.

“It’s absurd. It’s ludicrous,” he says. “And it makes me laugh, and it kind of makes me laugh at myself.”

There will be more fanfare this month — congratulatory messages, a formal on-air farewell, hat tips from other broadcast luminaries. And then there will be the matter of deciding what comes next.

“I’m trying to figure out some things to do. I’ve asked my wife, Amy: ‘So, what do I do on January 2nd? Is there a reason to leave the house?’”

Perhaps there will be some return appearances on 6abc — a special project here, some election analysis there. Perhaps he’ll try his hand at a different form of storytelling, like podcasting.

Or maybe there’s a life beyond news that Gardner hasn’t had time to ponder in the last 46 years.

“Maybe Jim Gardner is going away, and I’m going to reclaim Jim Goldman,” he says. “It’s interesting to sort of think about that. Jim Goldman will probably shave off the mustache, right?”