Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Longtime chairman who led Scripps into TV dies

Charles Scripps , the grandson of the media company's founder, began at a Cleveland paper.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 4, 2007

CINCINNATI - Charles E. Scripps, longtime chairman of media company E.W. Scripps Co., died Saturday (Feb. 3, 2007), the company said. He was 87.

Mr. Scripps died of natural causes near his home in Naples, the company said.

He was board chairman from 1953 until 1994, presiding over the company's growth as a newspaper publisher along with its entry into broadcast television, cable TV systems and networks and the Internet. The company's cable networks include HGTV and Food Network.

His grandfather, Edward W. Scripps, started the company in 1878.

"Charles Scripps provided the glue that bonded the Scripps enterprise together for a half-century," said William Burleigh, the company's chairman.

Charles Scripps began his newspaper career at his grandfather's first newspaper, the Cleveland Press, where he covered police and courts.

After World War II, where he served in the Pacific in the U.S. Coast Guard, he returned to the family business and became chairman of the family trust at the age of 28. He became chairman of the company five years later.

He retired in May 2003 from the company's board of directors, but remained chairman of the Edward W. Scripps Trust, the controlling shareholder of the company, until 2004.

[Last modified February 4, 2007, 01:24:44]