Jeff Greenfield Leaving CBS News

Breaking: CBS News senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield is leaving the network.

In an email to staff Monday night, Greenfield said he will be departing CBS at the end of April. It does not sound like the decision to leave was his own, if the email was any indication:

“While I did not initiate this decision, I think it was the right one,” he wrote.

Greenfield says he intends to write more books (his latest, Then Everything Changed, was released in February) and hints that he has some other plans up his sleeve. “[T]he notions I have about the kind of work I want to do require, I think, a different terrain,” he wrote.

In March, Greenfield told TVNewser that his contract would be up in the coming months. When asked if was considering retirement, he said “I’ve been doing this a long time… I know I have the writing bug now, whether I’m schlepping through Iowa in 2012 or sitting on the beach.”

Greenfield joined CBS News for the second time in 2007. Prior to that, he had been an analyst for CNN since 1998, and before that worked as a media analyst for ABC News from 1983-1997. His first stint at CBS News was as a media commentator from 1979-1983.

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