When I was with Scripps, some of us often worried about this — that the newspapers would be sold in favor of the higher margin cable networks. We comforted ourselves with the knowledge that the Scripps family trust wouldn’t allow it. Today is probably not a happy day in Scripps newspaperland.

UPDATE: Word is now that Scripps isn’t looking at a sale, but splitting off the newspaper division into a separate company. Presumably, a prviate company. That would be very good news, especially for the online division, imho, because all of the great, talented and intelligent people driving online strategy, making Scripps one of the very best online newspaper companies, would maybe have more latitude for innovation (not that they don’t already have a bunch of it).

UPDATE II: Jon Fine posts on the topic. Which prompts me to this thought: What if the Scripps family bought the newspaper division and took it private?