Diane Sawyer stepped down to get out from behind desk

DONNA SVENNEVIK/ABC Diane Sawyer broadcasts outside of Buckingham Palace for the Royal Wedding in April 2011.

Diane Sawyer walks away from ABCs World News anchor desk on top of the world and with plans to see much more of it, sources close to her said.

She wasnt pushed out, friends insist, walking away was actually her idea and one that shes quietly kept in the back of her mind for a long time.

Sawyers friends note that like any reporter worth more than a nickel (and this one was reportedly pulling down around $20 million year), Sawyer wants to get out more and the anchor desk, while intoxicatingly powerful, is confining.

Without the responsibility of showing up every day to anchor network news, Sawyer, 68, will now be free to focus the tail end of her career on reporting and telling the kind of stories she likes, a pal said.

And its the storytelling that Sawyer relishes.

ABC News Fidel Castro gives Sawyer a tour of his childhood home during one of her high-profile interviews.

As a correspondent and anchor, Sawyer was always an institution capable of landing the big gets sitting Presidents, despots such as Saddam Hussain, Fidel Castro and celebrities.

But in terms of journalism, her true love has been about digging for the truth and especially getting her hands dirty along the way.

Potential new projects may include stories that highlight the discrepancy between the wealthy and poor; the differences between living behind bars and being free; and any number of mind-churning topics, her friends say.

Much of those topics will be subjects for long-form reporting, which turns up on various ABC News programming in the near future.

Ida Mae Astute/ABC via Getty Images Sawyer (c.) bids goodbye to her Good Morning America co-workers in 2009 to take the evening news anchor chair.

So while shes saying goodbye to the daily grind, Sawyer is not going away just stretching her legs. Something you might want to do too after being stuck in various network TV studios for almost two decades.

That is, in fact, a notion that those close to Sawyer frequently point out: While she spent only five years in the anchor chair, prior to World News, Sawyer hosted Good Morning America and anchored news magazines such as Primetime and 20/20.

It stands to reason that while her TV gigs have been as high profile as it gets, they have for most part, frequently kept Sawyer indoors.

Those days are done.

The lady has a passport and by all accounts, she plans to put it to good use.

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Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/sawyer-stepped-behind-desk-article-1.1918945