CBS News EVP Paul Friedman made the trip to London earlier this week — to a CBS News operation once headed by Edward R. Murrow — to deliver the bad news.

Gone are cameraman Siphiwo Ralo, a South African who, in the early ’90′s, helped the network get access to the ghettos as apartheid was coming to an end. He’d been with CBS since 1985. Also gone, Nick Turner, who learned of the changes via phone. He is undergoing cancer treatment and not working at the moment. Cameraman Massimo Mariani and sound man Andy Stevenson are also being let go. The men have covered war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia and beyond.

While two photographers will remain on staff, London producers will be doing more shooting for correspondents Mark Phillips and Elizabeth Palmer. Separate from this week’s news, correspondent Richard Roth, who has been in CBS’ London bureau since 1998, is leaving the network.

The CBS News London bureau was shaken to the core on Memorial Day 2006 when camerman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan were killed in Baghdad while on assignment with former CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier.

The crews are being given a year’s salary and could freelance for CBS in the future, but sources tell us they don’t expect much work.

And CBS is not alone when it comes to international downsizing.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But it would take three-and-a-half years to get back to Iraq. Dozier returned last week for the first time since the attack.

Now based in CBS’ Washington bureau, Dozier traveled to Baghdad, Talil and Ramadi. On CBSNews.com she writes:

This time, we arrived with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, admittedly under heavy security, to Camp Victory outside Baghdad. I saw purposeful troops, but it didn’t have the same sense of the barely controlled frenzy I saw during the three years I spent there – with soldiers, civilian contractors and Iraqi tradesmen rushing back and forth, a steady stream of helicopters buzzing in and out, the roads choked with humvees and supply vehicles rushing to their next task.

Now, Camp Victory has the hum of a well-oiled machine-like they’ve got this down. The phrase that kept coming back to me was “on a glidepath.” Admittedly, one still studded by the occasional bout of horrific violence, but momentum for now seems to be in their favor.

Dozier’s reports were featured on CBSNews.com as well as CBS Radio News. There was no video crew this time around. CBS News gave Dozier the time to go as a private citizen at Adm. Mullen’s invitation. The trip is also providing Dozier material as she completes a paperback edition of her best-selling “Breathing the Fire” with a new chapter on her injuries and recovery. The author profits from the book are going to Fisher House, TAPS and other wounded warrior charities.

(Photo: CBS/Jim Garamone)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Now, friends of London-based Douglas and Brolan are pedaling their way to raise money and awareness for freelance journalists everywhere.

On Monday, journalists Andy Clarke, Mark Ludlow, and Andy Stevenson will set out on a 200 mile bike ride from London’s Fleet Street to the Reporters Without Borders memorial in Bayeux, France.

The trio hope to arrive in Bayeux on Friday, the third anniversary of the attack. The money raised will benefit the Rory Peck Trust for freelance journalists and Reporters Without Borders.

The guys are just £1,000 short of their £18,000 goal. Among those who’ve given, Christiane Amanpour who was donated £500 and Dan Rather who has donated £600. “Honor to our fallen and a salute to those who are reminding us never to forget,” Rather writes.

Click here if you’d like to donate…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.