Scripps announced that it was cutting 431 positions in the company this week, part of a continued restructuring of the company’s business.
It follows the company’s announcement last month that it was revamping its leadership structure, which eliminated 27 roles across Scripps’ local market and sales leadership.
At the same time, the company also announced that it is creating over 100 new positions, including local reporting roles and new community connection roles.
“These roles are designed to produce more reporting from the field, deepen our community reach and expand our local journalism to audiences across broadcast, streaming and digital platforms,” Scripps President Adam Symson said in a note to employees.
While acknowledging that “today is another hard day across Scripps,” Symson also warned that further layoffs will come.
“With today's announcements, the majority of the significant restructuring needed to establish our future operating model has now taken place, especially in our local newsrooms,” Symson said. “As we continue to move through our three-year transformation, we do expect additional role eliminations across the company, but not at the scale of those in 2026.”
The company says the reductions, part of Scripps’ "company transformation" could generate $125-$150 million of enterprise EBITDA growth by 2028 and that it expects to have implemented about $100 million in annual run-rate savings by year end.
For the third quarter, Scripps’ Local Media political revenue was nearly $81 million, driven by strong candidate, issue and advocacy spending across Scripps markets in Michigan and Ohio as well as Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Virginia. In August, the company had guided to a full-year range of $225-$250 million.
At the end of the third quarter, Scripps had $83 million in cash and will use that and proceeds from Q4 political advertising revenue to pay down at least $150 million of debt in the fourth quarter, the company said.
