Alissa Krinsky
TVNewser Contributor

“There’s life after whatever job you’re in now,” says former HLN anchor Linda Stouffer.

Stouffer was laid off in December after 12 years at the network.

She was not alone. Dozens of tvnewsers, on air and off, were let go at the end of 2008, as the industry reacted to a turbulent economy. Kevin Corke, John Larson and Mark Mullen of NBC lost their jobs. So did CNN’s Kathleen Koch and Rusty Dornin, HLN’s Carrie Lee, and numerous other journalists at those networks and at CBS News, too. ABC News laid off 35 staffers earlier this year.

Stouffer may have been in good company, but she was still looking to get back to work.

And she did. Three months after leaving HLN, she was picked up by Atlanta’s ABC station, WSB-TV. Stouffer is reporting part-time, hoping “to have some anchor opportunities down the line.”

Good news after an initial jolt. “Job loss is an earthquake of an experience,” says Stouffer, who first took time to “take stock, to see what I wanted to do next.”

It was her “big think.”

After also being laid off in December, former CNN Justice Department/Supreme Court correspondent Kelli Arena has had the chance to reflect, too.

“I’m doing great,” she says. “I had been working non-stop until now.

“The opportunity to just slow down, and take a breath, and not be ruled by my Blackberry is a tremendously different life than the one I had before,” she says.

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With David Gregory‘s promotion to “Meet the Press”, NBC needs to fill the senior White House correspondent role for the network. ABC named Jake Tapper as chief White House correspondent the day after the election; CBS named Chip Reid to their post a few days later.

An NBC News spokesperson tells TVNewser an announcement is expected “in the coming weeks.”

Meanwhile, TVNewser has learned NBC News correspondent Lee Cowan, who covered the Obama campaign, is moving even further West, from the Chicago bureau to Los Angeles.

The news comes less than a week after a round of NBC layoffs cut correspondents John Larson and Mark Mullen from the L.A. bureau.

Breaking: TVNewser has learned NBC Universal will be cutting up to 500 jobs in a round of layoffs which are now underway at all levels of the company — television, film and parks. That amounts to about 3% of the workforce. An insider with knowledge of the situation says the cuts are expected to continue into next week.

The NBC News bureaus in Dallas and Los Angeles (Burbank) are already experiencing cuts, with the insider saying Dallas will experience more layoffs than in Burbank. Among those losing their jobs, NBC News correspondent Don Teague who has been with the network since 2002.

This is all part of an effort to cut $500 million from the NBCU budget announced by company president Jeff Zucker in October.

Last month, TVNewser reported the network was offering buyouts to “virtually everyone.” If enough employees did not accept the offer, layoffs were to be the next step.

…Developing…

> Update: Los Angeles correspondents John Larson, who reported for many years for Dateline and Mark Mullen, who just returned to Burbank after a nearly two-year reporting run for NBC in Beijing, are among the cuts. As many as seven people in Burbank have been let go, including Heather Allan who’s been with NBC more than 30 years. Allan was the bureau chief for NBC News special events which involved coordinating Olympics coverage for the news division.