More Layoffs at ABC News

20 Positions in Finance, Operations Departments Being Eliminated

By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/27/2008 4:15:00 PM

There were deep cuts at ABC News in New York this week as more than 20 employees in the finance and operations departments were informed that their jobs were being eliminated as part of an ongoing restructuring project that began last spring.

“This new structure will streamline how we receive our finance and operations support. It will also make that support more directly responsible to those at ABC News who depend on it the most. And it should move us forward faster and more effectively into the evolving digital world,” ABC News president David Westin said in an internal e-mail.

Many of those eliminated, ABC News staffers said, have been there for decades.

The cuts began Wednesday with pink slips for employees in the finance department and extended into Thursday with the elimination of jobs in operations.

Dan Renaldo, who was the senior vice president with oversight of those departments, left earlier this year for NBC. His position, which had remained vacant, was eliminated while several new positions in finance and operations were created.

Operations employees will now report to Dave Davis, the executive VP who was brought in from WABC last fall. Davis, who has day-to-day oversight of ABC News programs and operations, reports to Westin.

The cuts in New York followed the downsizing of the graphics department at the news division’s Washington, D.C., bureau, where more than one-dozen staffers were laid off last summer.