Two departures at the Daily Journal

The Los Angeles Daily Journal will lose two journalists tomorrow. Associate Editor Daniel Yi, who started at the paper in January, is leaving to flak for the Port of Long Beach. LA Observed published his goodbye email yesterday.

Also leaving, Superior Court reporter Cortney Fielding, who decided she'd be better off striking out on her own. Fielding, who went to the DJ in January 2008 from the Pasadena Star-News, plans to freelance for now. From her parting email:

...leaving was a tough decision. I’ve loved working with everyone here and really enjoy covering LA courts, but curiosity has gotten the better of me. I want to see what, if anything, I can accomplish out on my own and maybe catch my breath a little while figuring out what I want to do next in this business.

Granted, this is something I probably couldn’t do if I hadn’t had the foresight to marry a man who would one day collect a stable paycheck from a boring old insurance company, so props go to me for that.

I got into journalism because I enjoyed storytelling and lacked the imagination necessary to make stories up myself. Why bother when there is already so much great material ripe for the picking? I plan on continuing to tell other people’s stories. I’ve gotten a few cool freelance gigs to get me started, and I’m working on some bigger projects I’ll tell everyone about after they are more certain-so I don’t look like a total loser if they fall through.

But, if by the end of the year, I’m calling you as a PR person trying to pitch a story about an amazing law firm’s ground-breaking swine-flu practice, I guess we will know this was a very,very bad idea.

The rest of the email is here.