ABC News lays off biz correspondent

ABC News has laid of business correspondent Betsy Stark, who has been with the network for more than a decade, reports Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times.

Gold writes, “In an e-mail to colleagues Friday, Stark praised her co-workers, saying, ‘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.’

“She called it ‘ironic’ that one of her final pieces for ABC News was about mid-career professionals forced to reinvent themselves after being laid off.

“‘They didn’t romanticize the process and neither will I,’ she wrote. ‘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.’

“An ABC executive who declined to be named speaking about personnel matters noted that ‘these are difficult times at a lot of news organizations. Betsy is a terrific reporter and a class act. And these are not easy decisions to make.'”

Read more here.