E.W. Scripps cut 431 positions nationwide on Tuesday, and the reductions reached WCPO-TV, where staffers lost jobs in the company’s third round of budget cuts in four months. The cuts at the Cincinnati station ran from 11 to 16 people, including half of its 12-person photo staff and two producers.
That is the clearest sign yet that the Scripps layoffs are not limited to one market or one department. Staff reductions were reported across nearly all Scripps-owned stations, and the company said the changes are part of a broader push to alter how its TV newsrooms operate.
At WCPO, the affected roles were described as primarily tied to traditional newscast production. The company said live newscasts will continue, while the station shifts to newsroom workflows that are meant to support more local reporting from the field and let journalists update stories throughout the day across broadcast, streaming, digital and social platforms. Technology and automation are part of that shift.
The cuts also land against a series of earlier changes. Seven weeks before Tuesday, Scripps let go Jeff Brogan in a local leadership restructuring, and on Sept. 9 seven TV general managers were among 27 jobs eliminated as the company replaced individual station managers with 11 regional managers. On Aug. 7, Adam Symson laid out a plan to Wall Street analysts to cut 12 percent of the workforce amid an embrace of AI.
What makes Tuesday’s move harder to read is the company’s own explanation. Scripps said the transformation includes the elimination of jobs and the creation of new positions, but it did not say how many new roles are coming or whether the company is ultimately shrinking or reshaping its headcount. Some non-union technical workers in information technology and broadcast engineering received layoff notices, while union-backed reporters, photographers and graphic designers at other stations were offered buyouts instead. WCPO photographers are not union members, unlike those at other Cincinnati TV stations.
For now, the scale is clear even if the endpoint is not. Scripps says it is still advancing a companywide transformation to meet the way people consume news across broadcast, streaming and digital platforms, but Tuesday’s cuts show that the transition is already costing jobs in newsroom production and beyond.
