The E.W. Scripps Company

The E.W. Scripps Company is one of the oldest and largest American media enterprises, known for its role in local broadcasting and public service journalism. Founded in 1878 by newspaper publisher Edward Willis Scripps, for whom the company is named, it began as a chain of newspapers serving working-class readers. The company evolved into a major U.S. broadcaster with some 60 television stations in more than 40 markets in 22 states. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Scripps has about 5,000 employees and reported revenue of $2.5 billion in 2024. The company is led by Adam Symson, president and chief executive officer, and trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol SSP.

Early years

Edward Scripps published the first issue of the Cleveland Penny Press on November 2, 1878, offering affordable daily news to the Ohio city’s working-class readers, who couldn’t afford the 5 cents that many papers then charged. He soon acquired the Cincinnati Penny Post and renamed it the Cincinnati Post. By the late 1890s, Scripps was expanding, launching, or purchasing newspapers in San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Nashville. Scripps’s growing newspaper network reflected his belief that journalism should serve the public, not private interests.

By 1894, he had joined with his half brother, George H. Scripps, and partner Milton Alexander McRae to form the Scripps-McRae League of Newspapers. In 1909, he organized another chain, the Scripps Coast League, encompassing papers on the West Coast. He also pioneered news syndication.

Scripps founded the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1902. In 1907, he established the United Press news service, a forerunner of United Press International.

In May 1917, Scripps established a headquarters in Washington, D.C., to coordinate coverage of World War I, placing his son Robert Paine Scripps in charge as editor in chief. The effort evolved into the Scripps Washington Bureau, which still operates as the company’s national newsroom for investigative reporting.

In 1919, he launched United Feature Syndicate, which supplied columns and comic strips to Scripps papers and other publishers and later became known for acquiring Charles Schulz’s Peanuts.

Growth and diversification

In 1922, the expanding Scripps organization adopted the motto “Give light and the people will find their own way,” formalized the following year. In 1927, the company added the lighthouse emblem to its logo, and the motto soon appeared on the mastheads of Scripps newspapers nationwide, a tradition that symbolized its public service mission.

After Edward Scripps died in 1926, the company was reorganized under his son Robert and publishing partner Roy W. Howard as the Scripps-Howard chain. By the middle of the century, the company had grown to include 34 newspapers in 15 states and become one of the nation’s most influential independently owned chains.

Its papers, including the Cleveland Press, Cincinnati Post, Pittsburgh Press, Memphis Press-Scimitar, and the (Denver) Rocky Mountain News, were known for vigorous local reporting and independent editorial positions.

Radio, TV, and philanthropy

Scripps entered radio broadcasting in 1935 with the formation of Continental Radio (later Scripps Broadcasting Company) and the purchase of WCPO in Cincinnati and WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee.

In December 1947, Scripps launched its first television station, WEWS in Cleveland, followed by WMC-TV in Memphis (1948) and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati (1949), extending its tradition of local news and public service journalism into the broadcast era.

In 1962, it established the Scripps Howard Foundation to support journalism education, scholarships, and community programs, reinforcing its public service identity.

Transition to broadcasting and cable

During the second half of the 20th century, Scripps continued to consolidate its holdings while adapting to changes in media technology and ownership rules. By the 1980s, Scripps had begun developing and acquiring cable television stations. In the 1990s, it launched several cable channels that became mainstays of home and lifestyle programming, including the Food Network in 1993 and HGTV in 1994.

In 1988, Scripps made its initial public offering of stock on Nasdaq, later moving to the New York Stock Exchange in 1991. (The company returned to Nasdaq in 2018.)

Restructuring and divestiture

To manage its growing number of cable channels, Scripps created Scripps Networks Interactive and spun it off as a separate publicly traded company in July 2008. (It was later acquired by Discovery, Inc., in 2018.)

Amid steep declines in print advertising and readership, Scripps shut down the Cincinnati Post, one of its oldest newspapers, in late 2007, and shuttered the Rocky Mountain News 14 months later. Scripps officially exited the newspaper business in 2015, when it merged its broadcast operations with those of Journal Communications and the two companies spun off their respective print holdings to form Journal Media Group. The deal concluded Scripps’s 137 years in the newspaper industry.

Scripps sold United Media Licensing, the character-licensing business of United Feature Syndicate, to Iconix Brand Group in 2010 for $175 million. The following year it transferred its remaining syndication operations, including United Feature Syndicate and the Newspaper Enterprise Association, to Andrews McMeel Universal.

What remained of the E.W. Scripps Company after these moves was a broadcast television and digital media enterprise built around its network-affiliated local stations and national news programming, with new ventures in online journalism and streaming media.

A shifting media landscape

As the 2010s progressed, Scripps faced the same structural challenges that confronted much of the media industry, including declining advertising revenue and increasing demand for online and streaming media.

Scripps responded by expanding into national media through acquisitions such as Newsy, a digital video news outlet purchased in 2013, and Katz Broadcasting, acquired in 2017, which added several over-the-air television networks.

During this period, the company sold its 34 radio stations to focus fully on television broadcasting and digital distribution.

By the mid-2020s, competition in national news and streaming had intensified, and advertising revenue continued to decline, leading Scripps to consolidate its operations.

In 2023, Scripps merged Newsy with resources from the Scripps Washington Bureau and Local Media national news desk to create Scripps News, a free 24-hour digital and over-the-air news network. The following year, the company discontinued the channel’s over-the-air broadcast and eliminated about 200 positions as part of a corporate-wide restructuring, keeping Scripps News solely as a streaming service.

Further workforce reductions followed in 2025 as Scripps streamlined operations to focus on local television and digital distribution.

In November 2025, rival broadcaster Sinclair, Inc. (SBGI) disclosed it had taken an 8% stake in Scripps, saying it had held discussions with Scripps about a potential merger but that no agreement had been reached. Days later, Sinclair submitted a formal bid to acquire all remaining shares in a cash-and-stock deal valuing Scripps at $538 million, or $7 a share—a 70% premium to the previous closing price of Scripps stock. The proposal would give Scripps shareholders a roughly 12% stake in the combined company. Scripps said its board would review the offer.

Modern structure and operations

As of 2025, Scripps remains one of the largest local broadcasters in the United States, operating dozens of stations and several national networks that make up these divisions:

• Local Media encompasses its television stations.
• Scripps Networks includes its national entertainment and news channels—ION, Court TV, Bounce, Grit, Laff, ION Mystery, Defy TV, and TrueReal—as well as the remaining streaming news division of Scripps News.
• Scripps Sports distributes professional and collegiate sports programming.
• Scripps Washington Bureau and affiliated news operations provide national reporting for the company’s local stations.

The company also administers the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a long-running program that promotes literacy and academic achievement among students in the U.S. and abroad. First organized in 1925 by a consortium of nine newspapers, the competition became part of the E.W. Scripps Company in 1941. Run from the company’s Cincinnati headquarters as a nonprofit, the competition has grown into one of the nation’s most prominent educational events and remains a defining element of Scripps’s public service legacy.

Legacy

Founded in the 19th century to provide affordable news to working-class readers, the E.W. Scripps Company helped pioneer the modern newspaper chain and news syndicate in the U.S. Through its sponsorship of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the company has become associated with education and public service journalism, values rooted in the populist ideals of its founder.