Possibly more than a dozen WCPO-TV staffers lost their jobs Tuesday in E.W. Scripps’ third round of budget cuts in four months. Scripps cut 431 positions nationwide Tuesday, a Scripps spokesperson says.
Multiple sources tell me Channel 9 eliminated half of its 12-person photo staff and two producers. Also gone are some assignment editors, a video editor, engineers and other employees for a total ranging from 11 to 16 people.
So don’t be surprised to see more reporters shooting iPhone videos for their stories.
“At WCPO, the affected roles are primarily tied to traditional newscast production. Live newscasts will continue — the station is moving to new newsroom workflows that support more local reporting from the field and allow WCPO journalists to update stories throughout the day across broadcast, streaming, digital and social platforms, with technology and automation helping enable those workflows,” the spokesperson says.
The Scripps changes announced Tuesday “include the elimination of 431 positions across the organization. These are difficult decisions affecting colleagues across the company, and we are grateful for the work and contributions of those whose roles are being eliminated,” the spokesperson says.
Layoffs and buyout offers were “impacting nearly all Scripps-owned stations across the country,” TheDesk.net reported Tuesday afternoon. Cincinnati, Detroit, Denver, Kansas City, Cleveland, Phoenix, Las Vegas and West Palm Beach stations reportedly had staff reductions.
Who was affected
The cuts come seven weeks after Scripps let go Jeff Brogan, WCPO-TV vice president and general manager, in a local leadership restructuring. Scripps replaced individual TV station general managers with 11 regional managers. Seven TV general managers were among the 27 jobs eliminated Sept. 9.
A month earlier, on Aug. 7, Scripps CEO Adam Symson laid out a “transformational plan” to Wall Street analysts to cut “12 percent of its workforce amid an embrace of AI (artificial intelligence),” Deadline reported.
The Desk — which reports on broadcast TV, streaming media, technology and journalism — says Scripps layoff notices on Tuesday “have been received by some non-union technical workers in information technology and broadcast engineering departments, according to a knowledgeable source. Union-backed reporters, photographers and graphic designers have received buyout offers instead of layoff notices because of terms found in their collective bargaining agreements with the company, two other sources said.”
Unlike the other Cincinnati TV stations, WCPO-TV photographers are not union members.
Other stations making news
The job cuts at Channel 9 came on a day when other Cincinnati TV stations were making news.
At WXIX-TV, vice president and general manager Jennifer Rieffer announced she was leaving to become general manager at a sister Gray Media station in Charlotte, N.C., a larger TV market. At WKRC-TV, Kyle Inskeep and Paula Toti anchored the 5 and 6 p.m. news from a patio bench outside the Channel 12 newsroom because of a bathroom flooding problem, I’m told.
‘Leaning into AI’
The spokesman for the legacy Cincinnati media company, founded in 1878, says “Scripps is continuing to advance its companywide transformation to adapt to how people consume news and information across broadcast, streaming and digital platforms. Our focus is on preserving Scripps’ longstanding commitment to serving our audiences while changing how we reach them. Across the company, this includes the creation of new positions and changes to responsibilities, as well as the elimination of certain roles.
“Across our local newsrooms, Scripps also is creating over 100 new positions, including local reporting roles and new community connection roles. We aim to fill as many of these new roles as possible with colleagues whose positions have been affected. These roles are designed to produce more reporting from the field, deepen our community reach and expand our local journalism across broadcast, streaming and digital platforms, keeping viewers connected to local news throughout the day, not only at scheduled broadcast times.”
In early November, Scripps is scheduled to report its third quarter earnings. At the second quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts in August, after cutting 268 jobs last summer, Symson discussed revolutionary changes due to AI at Scripps. He explained that Scripps’ broadcast television was transforming into a 24-hour streaming news model powered by AI automation, reports said.
“We’re leaning into AI, automation, technology and the centralization of some roles,” he said, according to Deadline. The changes will make the company’s local station group “a technology-forward, AI-powered broadcast journalism company dedicated to serving our communities with the same high-quality, fact-based reporting that they’ve relied on us for over the past 150 years.”
Two years ago, anchors Evan Millward and Jasmine Styles left Channel 9 when their jobs were eliminated in a newsroom restructuring to add five additional reporters.
Brogan also revealed in 2024 that Channel 9 was adopting the “Scrippscast” computer technology which de-emphasized the anchor role and allowed the station to pre-record newscasts at noon, 4 p.m. and 11 p.m.
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