More bad news for the newspaper business.

In a lengthy press release today, the E.W. Scripps Co. announced it will cease publication of the afternoon newspapers — The Kentucky Post and the Cincinnati Post — at the end of the year.

The demise of the paper put 52 newsroom employees out of a job. Scripps owns TV station WCPO-TV, an ABC affiliate, but will no longer compete in the newspaper business. It had been in a 30-year joint operating agreement with the Cincinnati Enquirer, owned by Gannett, but Gannett did not renew the agreement. The Enquirer is the area’s morning newspaper, while the Post is delivered in the afternoon. The papers maintained separate editorial staffs, but other departments of the newspaper were combined with the Enquirer.

The Post’s subcription rolls have been falling for years, down from 188,000 in 1977 to just 27,000 daily customers today. It reaches just 4 percent of Greater Cincinnati’s population.