Gordon Peterson, fixture of District local news, will leave WJLA at end of the year

Gordon Peterson, one of the deans of local-television news in Washington, will leave WJLA, channel 7, at the end of the year, he told colleagues on Friday. "My current contract expires at the end of the year and I have decided that after ten terrific years here, it is time to leave Channel 7," he wrote in an e-mail to "friends and colleagues" at the station. "I did not want you to hear this from anyone else."