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It has been a tense spring in the realm of big-time newspaper consolidation. Back in April, Gannett, owner of more than 100 newspapers across the country, including the flagship USA Today, made a roughly $400 million takeover bid for the Tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and several other titles.
The intervening weeks have seen a great deal of maneuvering by Tribune Chairman Michael Ferro to rebuff the bid, an effort that advanced Thursday with the news that Gannett may be backing off its bid in light of “expectations” that Tribune shareholders would back management in a critical vote.
[VIDEO: Tribune rejects Gannett’s bid again]
Amid all this business, the Tribune lost its mind, in a press release. First, it renamed and rebranded itself:
On June 20, we'll be tronc. Yep. tronc. pic.twitter.com/PvK8jtrQbp— Michael Zajakowski (@zajakowski) June 2, 2016
“Tronc” stands for “Tribune online content,” or, as this tronc press release renders it in smaller case: “tribune online content.” So obsessed is the new, rebranded company with the Web’s lower-case vibe that its press release starts various sentences that way. ...
Buzzwords and lower-case letters abound. Hope for the survival of the entity formerly known as the Chicago Tribune? Not so much. And the news release? One of the worst examples of baffling, befuddling, techno-speak-filled, corporate jargon laden press release ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them.