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It’s worth a mention how Adam Symson is throwing everyone under the bus for his mess. 

-He pinned the “news initiative” on Lisa Knutson in his email announcing her departure. 

-He sent CFO Jason Combs to Phoenix to discuss the company’s business strategy at the Deutsche Bank Leveraged Finance conference. 

-Jason Combs spoke first at Scripps’s Q2 report…dishing out all the bad news, then Symson spoke. 

-Symson said in the Scripps News shutdown memo “I made the decision”…then boasts of how great it was(n’t). Following that, Dean Littleton sends out another email on continuing to pollute local news with useless national Scripps News junk. That paints Littleton as the architect of it…not Symson. When it fails…it’s documented as Littleton’s fault. 

-Chief Revenue Officer Brian Norris claimed on LinkedIn that ION “is overwhelmed with business” in one of the funniest posts of the year. Scripps wouldn’t have serious money problems right now if was. 

The list goes on & on. 

That is the culture of Scripps from Symson on down: throw other people under the bus for your faults. In an industry where integrity is paramount…it’s shocking this guy is running a news company. 

No wonder people don’t trust the news. 

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Hi Scott, 

Great reporting on the Scripps News story.   I retired from Scripps in December, and people I spoke with there on Friday said your report that morning had a substantial impact on the C-Suite.

As a follow-up it may be worth noting that as recently as Tuesday of last week (9/24), Scripps was telling investors that Scripps News was an on-going part of its operations.  It made these remarks in its presentation at the  Deutsche Bank Leveraged Financial Conference.  You can find the links in the investor section of Scripps.com.  But for your convenience, I am including a screen grab from the pertinent slide in the PowerPoint presentation. 

 I've always been under the impression that it is a bad look when a company misleads the big money guys on Wall Street - especially when that company is making it clear it plans to refinance a portion of its debt.  For all its flaws, a large part of the financial industry is based on trust and when a company violates that trust the money guys may become more wary about dealing with it - especially when the company is in tough financial condition. 

An email about this story.

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Great post. 

What horrifies me is that when the FPOTUS was being interviewed all day yesterday, he was making outrageous statements. What was frustrating is that he knows no one will "call Bullshit". NO ONE. Journalists ask their questions and when he lies straight to the cameras, journalists generally say nothing, even when the man is lying straight to their face. Journalists are either afraid or are absolutely unprepared with facts. But its frustrating to watch. 

If Journalists are supposed to hold people in power accountable, why will they not do so with this FPOTUS? He told a journalist that the federal government was not doing anything, and that the GA Governor could not get a hold of the POTUS. This was such a lie and the journalist just stood there and said nothing. Sorry, at that moment the Journalist should have confronted the FPOTUS with the real facts and told him his statement was just not true.

Where are all the journalists with the real courage to do their jobs? Many retired and now we mostly have "Caroline Collins" types doing the news. Just saying.