A longtime NBC News correspondent appears to be headed out the door. TVNewser reports that Mike Taibbi is leaving the business, with Taibbi writing in a memo that as he turns 65 he’s “heading off watch for the first time in a long time.”

Taibbi, who is the father of writer Matt Taibbi, reports for all NBC News broadcasts, having joined the network in 1997 as a correspondent for “Dateline NBC.” Before that he worked for CBS’s “48 Hours” and ABC News.

In recent years he has covered the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., and the Gabby Giffords shooting, the story notes. Taibbi started out as a reporter at WCVB-TV in Boston in 1971.

In his letter to friends and colleagues, he wrote, “It occurred to me a few weeks ago, turning 65, that I’d had a by-line as a reporter for just about half a century. In print at first and then, for more than four decades, on television.”

He continued, “In his novel ‘Mile Zero,’ Thomas Sanchez wrote ‘Nothing lasts forever … not even eternal love.’” He added, “I’m a sailor, heading off watch for the first time in a long time on a passage I’ve been privileged to share with so many of you.”

Mike Taibbi