Kathleen Koch is leaving CNN after 18 years with the network. Koch specialized in aviation reporting and was a back-up correspondent at the Pentagon and White House.
Koch is based out of the DC bureau.
Earlier today, Jamie McIntyre announced he was leaving as well.
“2009 will be a year of change for the nation,” she writes in a memo obtained by TVNewser. “And it will be a year of change for me. After 18 years with CNN, I am moving on.”
Click continued to see the full memo from Koch…
2009 will be a year of change for the nation. And it will be a year of change for me. After 18 years with CNN, I am moving on.
I am so grateful for the amazing opportunity I’ve had to cover so many disparate and challenging beats, from aviation, to hurricanes, the Pentagon, Capitol Hill. And while I’ve helped out on the White House beat since 1996, I’ve particularly enjoyed being there full-time for the past year. It takes a special breed not only to cover that beat, but to do the people’s work within those gray sandstone walls. I have made friends there in the media and on the staff that I hope will last a lifetime.
I am also grateful to CNN for its flexibility during the years when I worked part-time. The opportunity to put my family first while my daughters were young was worth its weight in gold.
I have always said the best thing about CNN is the people you work with.
And that is what I will miss most. After 18 years, you are my family.
I will not begin to try to say thank you. The list would be endless.
Just know that it has been an honor and a pleasure to work with you through blizzards, hurricanes, droughts, floods, plane crashes, hearings, press conferences, endless stakeouts… We pulled together and put on stories that illuminated, educated, entertained and sometimes, when we did our job particularly well, changed people lives.
You have all enriched my life, and for that I count myself a fortunate woman. As my friends on the Mississippi Gulf Coast always say, I am blessed.
Kathleen