Scripps Cuts 268 Jobs and Replaces Local News Anchors With AI

According to Inc., the anchors at WMAR-2 in Baltimore have said goodbye to viewers as the station moves to anchor-less newscasts that rely on AI and automation. The cuts are company-wide. The Desk reports that E.W. Scripps confirmed pink slips were sent to 268 workers. At Metaintro, we cover layoffs from the position of the people in them, and this one is worth reading closely because the employer has been unusually explicit about what is replacing the work.

What exactly did Scripps announce?

A staged transformation rather than a one-off cut. The chief executive confirmed in a company-wide memo that 268 workers were affected, describing them as "teammates who have helped build and serve this company in important ways" and saying "We are deeply grateful for everything they have contributed". Deadline reports that since the beginning of the year the company has eliminated 432 positions and 126 open jobs, accounting for about 12% of its total.

The financial target attached to that is specific. The cuts will help the company achieve 100 million dollars in run rate savings, and Scripps said the layoffs and increased use of technology will help increase EBITDA by 125 million to 150 million dollars by 2028 through cost savings and revenue stimuli. The chief executive called the job cuts "a painful process full of difficult decisions," adding that executives are making the moves "knowing they are financially necessary for fulfilling our mission".

That combination, an explicit headcount number alongside an explicit savings target, is useful information for anyone employed there. It means the reduction is sized against a financial goal rather than against a workload, and goals of that kind are usually met in stages. A workload-driven cut ends when the work is covered. A target-driven cut ends when the number is hit, which is why the second kind so often arrives in waves. The company itself framed this as a new "phase of our transformation plan", language that describes a sequence rather than a conclusion.

Which roles and locations were affected?

Broader than the on-air jobs that generated the coverage. The cuts range from newsroom production roles to local sales positions, and workers at Scripps-owned local television stations in New York, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas were among those affected. Sales roles being included matters, because it signals a restructuring of the business rather than only of the journalism. When cuts reach the revenue side as well as the cost side, the company is usually resetting what it expects the whole operation to earn, not trimming an expense line. For employees that distinction is worth reading carefully, because a revenue reset tends to be followed by changes to targets, territories and commission structures for the people who remain.

Some newly acquired stations are being hit hardest. The chief executive confirmed that stations in markets such as Colorado Springs and Twin Falls will be the epicentre of deep consolidation efforts and unspecified "cost actions" rooted in making "fundamental changes in the product," with newsroom resources recommitted to enterprise-level reporting rather than "competing for the same finite resources and the same set of stories".

The structural change underneath is centralisation. Scripps will produce digital-first news through a "hub" model that will "centralize the digital news production work" that does not need repeating in every market. For workers, a hub model is the detail to watch, because it converts many local roles into fewer central ones, and the surviving jobs frequently sit somewhere else geographically. Metaintro has covered how that plays out for staff in the Starbucks relocation that put Seattle jobs on the line.

What actually replaced the anchors on air?

Less than the phrase AI anchors suggests, which is worth being precise about. WMAR first debuted the change on Wednesday, August 12, and in place of the evening anchors the station aired segments of prerecorded news stories spliced with graphics and commercials. There is no synthetic presenter reading the news. The anchor role was removed rather than replaced by a digital double. That distinction matters for anyone trying to judge their own exposure. The technology here did not learn to do a person's job. It made the job unnecessary to the format, which is a lower bar and a faster one to clear. Automation that removes a step is usually deployed years before automation that imitates a person, and it displaces just as many people.

Scripps is candid that AI is central to the wider model. On the second-quarter earnings call the chief executive described a "revolution" in how the company generates local news programming and said the company is "leaning into AI, automation, technology and the centralization of some roles". He said the changes will make the 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", adding "We are not wavering on our commitment to quality journalism". Scripps will also launch around-the-clock news streams for its local news-producing stations, tailored to the needs of each market.

The human cost is not abstract. One evening anchor who had been at the station for 23 years told viewers "You guys are like family" and called it an honour to come into their homes, and a morning anchor held back tears thanking viewers. WMAR is Maryland's oldest news station and has been on the air for more than 78 years.

Why did the share price rise on the news?

Because investors were told a cost story and liked it. Scripps released second-quarter results below Wall Street expectations, posting revenue of 490.4 million dollars, down 9% from the year-ago period, and a net loss of 34 cents a share. Despite that miss, Scripps shares rose more than 20% in mid-day trading on the cost cutting details.

That reaction is the single most important thing for workers in any industry to understand about this announcement. The market rewarded the reduction, not the results. That is a signal worth carrying into any industry, because it shapes what executives are rewarded for doing next. When a company misses its numbers and its stock rises on the strength of a layoff plan, the incentive to continue is reinforced rather than satisfied. Metaintro has documented the same pattern elsewhere in the software firm that cut a fifth of its staff to fund an AI bet and in Allianz cutting jobs amid AI adoption.

The industry backdrop is genuinely difficult, and it would be unfair to present this as purely opportunistic. Broadcasters of all sizes, especially local station owners, have been battling cord-cutting and coping with ongoing audience and advertiser shifts away from linear viewing. The largest US station owner has entered a legal dispute after announcing the close of a 6.2 billion dollar acquisition of a rival, with the outcome likely to affect the entire sector. Metaintro looked at that turbulence in what a halted media merger means for jobs.

Is this the end of local news jobs?

Not the end, but a redefinition of which local news jobs exist. The stated direction is fewer duplicated production roles, more centralised digital work, and a shift toward enterprise-level reporting instead of multiple newsrooms chasing the same stories. Read plainly, that reduces demand for the roles that made a daily broadcast happen and preserves, at least in theory, the roles that produce original reporting.

Whether that holds is the open question, and the company has left itself the language to go further. A stated commitment to quality journalism alongside a 12% workforce reduction and a 2028 EBITDA target describes a plan whose financial commitments are precise and whose editorial commitments are not. Workers should weigh which of those two is measurable.

For journalists specifically, the practical read is that the securest roles are the ones tied to original output that cannot be centralised, meaning investigative work, sourced local reporting and specialist beats. The roles at most risk are those defined by a production process, since a production process is exactly what a hub model absorbs. Metaintro has covered how newsroom staff have organised around this in the ProPublica journalists who struck over AI protections and what AI protections in union contracts now look like.

What should you do if your employer announces an AI transformation?

Treat the financial target as the schedule, because it usually is. When a company names a savings figure such as 100 million dollars in run rate and a multi-year EBITDA goal, it has published the size of the gap it intends to close. If the announced cuts do not obviously reach that figure, further stages are likely, and the sensible assumption is that you are early in the process rather than past it.

Three moves follow. First, document what you do that is not a repeatable process, since the hub model absorbs standardised work and leaves originated work behind. Second, get your severance terms in writing and understand them before you need them, which Metaintro covers in what outplacement is and how to negotiate a severance package and the Microsoft severance terms that set a benchmark. Third, start the search before the announcement reaches you, because the market for your skills is best while you still have the job. Metaintro's guide to running a job search with AI after a layoff is a practical starting point.

Be realistic about the landing, too. Metaintro has reported that most laid-off workers end up accepting a lower-paying job, and that some return to the same employer at reduced pay. Knowing that in advance is what lets you plan a runway rather than accept the first offer under pressure.

What does this mean for your career?

The transferable lesson reaches well beyond broadcasting. An employer publicly committed to becoming an "AI-powered" version of itself has told you which work it intends to keep paying for. That is more information than most workers get, and it is worth using rather than resenting. Ask which category your daily work falls into, whether it is the standardised production the hub absorbs or the originated output the company says it wants more of, and move your time toward the second.

The second point is about timing rather than skill. The cuts here were announced against a savings target that runs to 2028, which means the affected workforce had years of warning in the strategy even though individuals had days of warning in practice. Company transformation plans are usually public long before the memo arrives. Reading the earnings call of the company you work for is an unglamorous but genuinely effective career habit, because executives describe their headcount intentions to investors more plainly than they describe them to staff.

Finally, for the 268 people holding a notice right now, the market context is better than the headlines suggest. Metaintro has tracked that job cuts in July hit their lowest level in two years and that tech has led wage growth despite the layoff headlines. Being cut in a restructuring says something about a business model and very little about the person. The skills that produced 78 years of local broadcasting do not stop being valuable because one company changed its cost structure.

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People Also Asked

Q: How many jobs did Scripps cut?

A: The company confirmed pink slips were sent to 268 workers. Since the beginning of the year it has eliminated 432 positions and 126 open jobs, accounting for about 12% of its total workforce. The cuts support a target of 100 million dollars in run rate savings and an EBITDA increase of 125 million to 150 million dollars by 2028.

Q: Did AI actually replace the news anchors?

A: The anchor role was removed rather than filled by a synthetic presenter. At WMAR in Baltimore the station aired prerecorded news segments spliced with graphics and commercials in place of evening anchors, starting Wednesday, August 12. The company describes the wider model as leaning into AI, automation, technology and the centralization of some roles.

Q: Which Scripps stations and jobs were affected?

A: Workers at stations in New York, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas were among those affected, with cuts ranging from newsroom production roles to local sales positions. Newly acquired stations in markets including Colorado Springs and Twin Falls were named as the focus of deeper consolidation.

Losing a job to a restructuring is not a verdict on your work, and the skills behind a daily newsroom transfer further than most people expect. Metaintro surfaces verified roles from employers who are hiring right now, including the communications, production and content jobs that local media experience maps onto. Create a free profile and let those years count somewhere they are wanted.