Former Wyoming AP correspondent Jim Angell dies
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Jim Angell, a former Associated Press Wyoming correspondent and Wyoming Press Association executive director, died Wednesday. He was 64.
For decades, Angell was a fierce advocate for journalism and journalists in Wyoming and known for his unflinching personality, wit and unfailing sense of humor.
Most recently, Angell was managing editor of the Cowboy State Daily, which he helped establish in 2019, two years after he and his wife, Mary, founded the Wyoming News Exchange, a cooperative service for the state’s newspapers.
“Nobody was prouder of Wyoming newspapers than Jim Angell,” Robb Hicks, president of the Wyoming Press Association Foundation and publisher of the Buffalo Bulletin, told the Casper Star-Tribune.
Angell was born May 29, 1958, in Spokane, Washington, the only child of Walla Walla wheat farmers Carol and Darrel Dean Angell. He graduated from Walla Walla High School in 1976 and earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Washington State University in 1981.
He was a reporter at the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Washington, before moving to Cheyenne in 1985 to take a job with the AP, where he worked until 1998.
He married Mary Shannon, then a reporter for the Wyoming Eagle, in 1990. Their daughter Amanda was born in 1997.
Angell became director of the Wyoming Press Association in 1998, a job he held for 20 years. A staunch advocate of open government, he lobbied the Wyoming Legislature and educated reporters and elected officials about Wyoming’s open meetings and public records laws.
The Wyoming Press Association in 2019 gave Angell the Milton Chilcott Award for his “extraordinary efforts to defend access to public information.”
A talented guitarist and singer/songwriter, Angell played in five bands in Cheyenne and was famous among Wyoming journalists for performing at Wyoming Press Association conventions.
He also learned to do voiceover work and narrated four audio books for Boulder, Colorado, romance novelist L.A. Sartor.
Angell was preceded in death by his parents and by Jeff “Kong” Shields of Walla Walla, Washington, a close family friend whom Angell considered a brother. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
Arrangements for a celebration of life were pending.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Wyoming Press Association Foundation at 2121 Evans Ave., Cheyenne, WY 82001.
