First Tegna and Now Tronc
People laughed at Gannet when they changed the name of their television division to Tegna, but now Tribune has done one better.
Tribune Publishing announced it would be changing its name to a word Tribune boss Michael Ferro made up, tronc (stylized in all lowercase letters).
Yet, to show how backward Tribune or tronc is in their in their thinking, they forgot to secure the social media accounts for that name, leading many others to grab them instead, all of which are making fun of the newspaper company. Additionally, social media is abuzz with current and past employees, as well as media experts all universally ripping on the strange name change.
The funniest of the parody accounts so far is a Twitter account called @TroncChicago, whose first tweet was "Bring me the idiot consultant who sold Tribune Media on announcing this awful name without looking locking down all related social accounts."
There are other accounts started today with names like Tronc Inc (which will apparently be used as a pro-Donald Trump account), Tronc Publishing, Tronc Media, and even Colonel Tronc.
The actual Twitter account, @tronc was already in use by a Japanese company tweeting out spam in Japanese. It has not been used since 2009.
Had Ferro and his people been a little more forward-thinking, they most likely could have purchased the rights or taken over that account in advance of today's announcement.
One person wrote that "tronc" is the sound a newspaper makes just before it dies.