CINCINNATI, Ohio – The E.W. Scripps Company announced today that The Edward W. Scripps Trust, controlling shareholder of the company, and the Jack R. Howard Trust have commenced a public offering of 5.5 million of the company’s Class A Common Shares at $50 per share.The company will not receive any proceeds from the sale of the shares by the trusts.The offering is underwritten and managed by Merrill Lynch. A written prospectus may be obtained from the underwriters.Of the shares to be sold, approximately 3.1 million are owned by The Edward W. Scripps Trust. The Scripps trust has advised the company that the decision to sell shares is in keeping with its long-term effort to diversify the trust’s assets. The trust’s most recent sale of Scripps shares was in late 1993.The remaining shares to be sold are owned by the Jack R. Howard Trust, which was established by Jack R. Howard, a retired chief executive officer of the company. Mr. Howard died in March 1998.The company’s Class A Common Shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SSP.” There is no public market for the company’s other class of common stock – its Common Voting Shares. The E. W. Scripps Company’s major operations include:· Daily newspapers in 20 markets;· Network-affiliated television stations in nine markets;· Two cable TV networks – Home & Garden Television (100 percent owned) and the Food Network (56 percent owned);· United Media, a worldwide licensing and syndication company whose characters include PEANUTS and DILBERT;· Cinetel Productions, a leading producer of primarily non-fiction programming for the cable network industry.