Media and entertainment reporter Zeidler leaving Reuters

Susan Zeidler, a reporter for Reuters covering the media and entertainment industries, is leaving the news organization on Thursday.

In an email to Talking Biz News, Zeidler wrote, “I plan to focus on my books and freelancing in 2014 and beyond.”

Zeidler is currently writing the third installment in her young adult time travel series, known as the Practice Room series. The first book is titled, “The Practice Room,” and the second one is “Flying Through Music,” which was a  bestseller this year at Vromans, the largest and oldest independent book store in southern California.

She is also a frequent speaker at schools and libraries and plan to work with WriteGirl in 2014, a Los Angeles-based mentoring non-profit  program pairs professional women writers  with at-risk teen girls.

“It’s been an  incredible 28 years working for the Baron and collaborating with some of the most talented and fun people in the industry,” said Zeidler. “I am looking forward to this new chapter in my life, but will miss Reuters and wish the best to all my colleagues, those who have left before me, and those who remain to ‘fight the fight.'”

Zeidler joined in Reuters in NYC in 1985, covered everything from equities, commodities, energy and treasuries.  In 1994-95, she worked out of the Pittsburgh one-person bureau,  covering Big Steel, the Westinghouse merger with CBS , a USAir flight crash, the Andy Warhol museum opening, and was responsible for coverage in several surrounding states.

She transferred to Los Angeles in 1995, where she focused mostly on media coverage, meeting many industry moguls and celebrities along the way, but also wrote about banking,  legal and most recently the casino industry.

In 2001, she won a SABEW Best in Business Award award for her coverage of the Napster shutdown.

She has also written for Middlesex News in Waltham, Mass., McGraw-Hill, Green Bay Gazette, and trade and consumer magazines. She went to SUNY Albany and Northwestern.