An Open Letter To E.W. Scripps CEO & Board of Directors

While this will likely fall on deaf ears, a Scripps employee penned this open letter to Scripps CEO Adam Symson and the Scripps board.

To the Scripps Board of Directors and Executive Leadership:

Another 431 jobs gone today. More than 200 were eliminated in August. That is not a restructuring. It is a pattern—and the people responsible for it should be ashamed.

Scripps leadership keeps stripping the company of the people who do the work, then dressing the damage up in polished corporate language. Employees are not “positions” on a spreadsheet. They are journalists, producers, editors, photographers, engineers, and support staff who have carried this company while executives made decisions that brought it here.

Now the remaining employees are expected to shoulder the work of hundreds of people who were just shown the door. That is not a strategy. It is a failure of leadership disguised as efficiency.

If executives believe these cuts are necessary, they should have the courage to explain why the workforce keeps paying the price while those at the top remain in charge. No more hollow statements about difficult decisions. No more pretending that gutting teams is a plan for growth. And no more asking employees to believe in a company that has shown so little regard for them.

The executives responsible for this repeated damage should resign. They have lost the trust of the people who make Scripps function, and they have given employees every reason to doubt that leadership has a credible vision for the company’s future.

Scripps cannot rebuild its reputation by cutting its way through its workforce. It needs leaders who know how to lead—and who are willing to accept responsibility when they fail. Adam, you’re a weak leader. 

Sincerely,

A Scripps employee