E.W. Scripps cut 431 positions on Tuesday in its Scripps layoffs, and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati was among the stations hit. The company says live newscasts will continue while the station moves to new newsroom workflows.
The cuts reached WCPO-TV staffers as Scripps carried out its third round of budget cuts in four months. Multiple sources said half of the station’s 12-person photo staff and two producers were eliminated, along with assignment editors, a video editor, engineers and other employees, for a total of 11 to 16 people.
WCPO-TV newsroom changes
A Scripps spokesperson said the affected roles at WCPO were primarily tied to traditional newscast production. The spokesperson said the station is shifting to workflows that support more local reporting from the field and let journalists update stories throughout the day across broadcast, streaming, digital and social platforms.
The same statement said technology and automation will help enable those workflows. For WCPO staff still in place, the immediate change is not a shutdown of live news but a reworking of how stories are gathered, updated and distributed across platforms.
Scripps cuts across stations
Layoffs and buyout offers were affecting nearly all Scripps-owned stations across the country. TheDesk.net reported that stations in Cincinnati, Detroit, Denver, Kansas City, Cleveland, Phoenix, Las Vegas and West Palm Beach had staff reductions, while union-backed reporters, photographers and graphic designers at some stations received buyout offers instead of layoff notices.
Scripps had already pared back leadership before Tuesday. The company let go Jeff Brogan, WCPO-TV’s vice president and general manager, seven weeks earlier, and later replaced individual TV station general managers with 11 regional managers.
Adam Symson plan
On Aug. 7, Adam Symson laid out a transformational plan to Wall Street analysts to cut 12 percent of the company’s workforce amid an embrace of AI. Scripps said its companywide transformation is meant to adapt to how people consume news and information across broadcast, streaming and digital platforms, while preserving its longstanding commitment to serving audiences.
That leaves a straightforward question for WCPO-TV and other stations: how many of the new positions Scripps says it will create will land in local newsrooms, and which roles will be rebuilt around the new workflows.
