ABC News Correspondent Cuts Continue – Betsy Stark Out Today

by Steve Krakauer | 2:17 pm, April 2nd, 2010

» 4 comments

ABC News business correspondent Betsy Stark is the latest journalist cut today by the network as it looks to trim roughly 20% of the entire news division, meaning hundreds of jobs lost through buyout or layoff.

Stark had been with the network for 12 years. More details and her goodbye note to staff inside.

In her email, Stark described a recent story she reported for ABC:

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.

An ABC insider tells TVNewser, “Everybody adores Betsy. She’s a class act.”

Stark joins other ABC correspondents like Brian Rooney, Laura Marquez and Lisa Daniels who were cut last week. Expect more big names to be leaving the network as April progresses.

Here’s the internal note Stark sent this morning:

From: Stark, Betsy
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 11:25 AM
To: #ABCTV Business News
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

abc, ABC News, Betsy Stark, Layoffs

http://thedailybarb.com Burnnotice

Damn, thats too bad. Another victim of Corporate greed….
Andrew Tyndall

Betsy Stark fell into disfavor at ABC World News when Diane Sawyer replaced Charles Gibson. Under Gibson, Stark was a regular in the role of business correspondent, filing at the rate of at least a package a week (46 in 2007, 88 in 2008, 61 in 2009). Under Sawyer, in the first quarter of 2010, Stark filed just eight packages, which is equivalent to an annual rate of 32. The economics workload seems to have shifted to general assignment reporter David Muir, who also filed eight packages on that beat in the same time period.
Don_Tanna

Stark and the others laid off are victims of their own liberal bias and ABC’s liberal bias. If just one network would make an effort to be less liberal leaning in their news coverage they would be able to take viewers away from Fox News and proper. Next to make cuts will be CBS news.
ChrisNH

I’m quite sure that those laid off from various media outlets will be quite content to spend more ‘quality time with family’ while enjoying the ‘advantages’ of being unemployed. After all, Obama and the rest of the Lib Media Cabal have been preaching the ‘wonderfulness’ of unemployment. Let’s see how much the practice what they preach.