ABC News business correspondent Betsy Stark is being let go in a round of personnel cuts that will ultimately number in the hundreds.
Stark, who has been with ABC since 1998, was informed of the news yesterday. In a note to colleagues this morning, obtained by TVNewser, Stark writes, “It is ironic, I think, that one of my last stories here was about professionals in mid-life forced by a layoff to reinvent themselves.”
An ABC News insider tells us, “Everybody adores Betsy. She’s a class act.”
Before ABC, Stark worked at Dow Jones as correspondent and later as senior producer of the weekly “Wall Street Journal Report.”
“Second acts are possible,” writes Stark, “and it is exciting to consider the possibilities beyond this job that I have loved and which I have worked hard to do well.”
Adds the insider, “These are difficult times for many news organizations and these are agonizing decisions.”
Stark’s email to colleagues, after the jump…
> Earlier: Brian Rooney, Laura Marquez, Lisa Fletcher Among ABC News Correspondents Cut
________________________________________
From: Stark, Betsy
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 11:25 AM
Subject: A Personal Word
To my dear colleagues at ABC News:
After years of reporting the jobs story on the first Friday of the month, today I find myself the story rather than the reporter. ABC has decided to let me go.
Others who have gone before me have said what bears repeating now: I hold you, my colleagues, in the highest regard. Your talent, your raw intelligence, your commitment to getting it right, your grace under impossible pressure and, at all the times it mattered most, your friendship, have made my years here a privilege.
It is ironic, I think, that one of my last stories here was about professionals in mid-life forced by a layoff to reinvent themselves. They didn’t romanticize the process and neither will I. But they prove what I believe to be true – that second acts are possible – and it is exciting to consider the possibilities beyond this job that I have loved and which I have worked hard to do well.
I will miss you. Don’t be strangers.
Betsy