Tribune Publishing: You can call us tronc now

The digital age has spooked traditional media companies for sure.

They have spent the past few years trying to prove that they have relevance in an internet era, that they’re still totally connecting with (fill in the blank—readers, listeners, viewers), and that they remain worthy of advertisers’ money.

One way to accomplish this, many seem to think, is to change their long-held names.

Thus has Clear Channel become iHeartMedia and CBS Outdoor morphed into Outfront Media and ABC Family turned into Freeform.

Another one is joining their ranks—Tribune Publishing.

On Thursday, the long-struggling newspaper group said it’s changing its name to tronc, which stands for tribune online content. (tronc is all lower case, editors note.)

Tribune, which appears to have successfully fended off a recent takeover bid by Gannett, says the name better reflects the company’s multi-faceted focus and renewed focus on technology to connect with readers.

How did this name change come about?

One can imagine a board meeting and someone saying in a panicky voice, “We can’t have the word ‘publishing’ in our name!” and everyone agreed.

One assumes it was just a matter of time before someone fiddled with some letters to come up with “tr” (Tribune) “on” (online) “c” (content.)

The press release about the name change says the company will focus on “content curation and monetization.”

Considering Tribune owns a number of highly respected newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, it’s an interesting choice of words—curation is regarded with disdain among journalists, because it’s seen as little more than aggregating others’ content for the purpose of driving page views.

Twitter was, as you’d expect, going nuts over the tronc name change, with most people dubbing it a terrible idea. It may take some time for people to get used to the new moniker.

Tags: newspapers, tribune, Tribune Publishing, tribune publishing name change, tronc, twitter