Early history Tribune Publishing's history dates back to 1847, when the
Chicago Tribune (for which the company and its former parent, Tribune Media, are named) published its first edition on June 10 of that year, in a one-room plant at
LaSalle and
Lake Streets in Chicago. The
Tribune constructed its first building, a four-story structure at Dearborn and
Madison streets, in 1869; however the building was destroyed, along with most of the city, by the
Great Chicago Fire in October 1871. The
Tribune resumed printing two days later with an editorial declaring "Chicago Shall Rise Again". The newspaper's editor and part-owner,
Joseph Medill, was elected mayor and led the city's reconstruction. A native
Ohioan who first acquired an interest in the
Tribune in 1855, Medill gained full control of the newspaper in 1874 and ran it until his death in 1899. Medill's two grandsons, cousins
Robert R. McCormick and
Joseph Medill Patterson, assumed leadership of the company in 1911. That same year, the
Chicago Tribunes first newsprint mill opened in
Thorold, Ontario, Canada. The mill marked the beginnings of the Canadian newsprint producer later known as QUNO, in which Tribune held an investment interest until 1995. The
Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate was formed in 1918, leading to Joseph Patterson's establishment of the company's second newspaper, the
New York Daily News on June 26, 1919. Tribune's ownership of the New York City tabloid was considered "interlocking" due to an agreement between McCormick and Patterson.
Expansion The company acquired the Fort Lauderdale-based
Sun-Sentinel newspaper in 1963; this was later followed by its purchase of the
Orlando Sentinel in 1965. In 1973, the company began sharing stories among 25 subscriber newspapers via the newly formed
news service, the Knight News Wire. By 1990, this service was known as Knight-Ridder/Tribune and provided graphics, photo, and news content to its member newspapers. KRT became McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, which is owned by the Tribune Company and McClatchy, when
The McClatchy Company purchased
Knight-Ridder Inc. in 2006. The merger added seven daily newspapers to Tribune's portfolio, including the
Los Angeles Times, the Long Island-based
Newsday,
The Baltimore Sun, and the
Hartford Courant. Tribune Media Net, the national advertising sales organization of Tribune Publishing, was established in 2000 to take advantage of the company's expanded scale and scope. Later in the decade, Tribune launched daily newspapers targeting urban commuters, including the
Chicago Tribune RedEye edition in 2002, followed by an investment in
AM New York one year later. In 2006, Tribune acquired the minority equity interest in
AM New York, giving it full ownership of the newspaper. The company sold both
Newsday and
AM New York to
Cablevision Systems Corporation in 2008, with the sale of the latter paper closing on July 29 of that year.
Takeover by Sam Zell and bankruptcy On April 2, 2007, Chicago-based investor
Sam Zell announced plans to buy out the Tribune Company for $34.00 a share, totaling $8.2 billion, Privatization of the Tribune Company occurred on December 20, 2007, with Tribune's stock listing being terminated at the close of the trading day. On December 8, 2008, faced with a high debt load totaling $13 billion, related to the company's
leveraged buyout and subsequent privatization, and a sharp downturn in newspaper advertising revenue, Tribune filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in what was the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. Company plans called for it to emerge from bankruptcy by May 31, 2010,
Spin-off of publishing unit On February 26, 2013, Tribune reportedly hired investment firms
Evercore Partners and
J.P. Morgan & Co. to oversee the sale of its newspapers. On July 10, 2013, Tribune announced that it would split into two companies,
spinning off its publishing division into the Tribune Publishing Company. Its broadcasting, digital media and other assets (including
GraceNote) would remain with the Tribune Company. On November 20, 2013, Tribune announced it would cut 700 jobs from its newspaper properties due to declining advertising revenues. On June 17, 2014, in a presentation for lenders, Tribune revealed that it had set August 4 as the target date for its spin-off of Tribune Publishing.
Post spin-off Tribune Publishing acquired six suburban daily and 32 weekly newspapers in the
Chicago Metropolitan Area in October 2014. These acquisitions were similar in strategy to earlier acquisitions in the state of Maryland, expanding its footprint in its eight "core markets". On May 7, 2015, Tribune Publishing announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the
San Diego Union-Tribune and its associated properties for $85 million, ending the paper's 146 years of private ownership. Following the completion of the acquisition, the
Union-Tribune and the
Los Angeles Times became part of a new operating entity known as the California News Group, led by
Times publisher and CEO Timothy E. Ryan. The two California papers retained distinct operations, but sought a synergy with content sharing between them. In April 2016,
Gannett Company (which, much like Tribune, had spun out its broadcasting properties into a
separate firm to focus on publishing assets) made an unsolicited bid to acquire Tribune Publishing for $12.25 per-share, or around $400 million. This deal was rejected by Tribune's shareholders in May 2016; in turn, Gannett increased its offer to around $15 per-share (around $800 million). On May 17, 2016, Tribune chairman Michael Ferro stated that he intended to make a bid to acquire Gannett instead. On November 1, 2016, Gannett announced that it would no longer pursue its acquisition of Tronc.
tronc era On June 2, 2016, the company announced that it would rebrand itself as
tronc, short for "Tribune online content". The rebranding took place on June 20, 2016. Tronc began trading on
NASDAQ under the symbol TRNC. In June 2018, the Tribune Company announced that it would no longer be referred to as Tronc and would instead henceforth be called "Tribune Publishing". At the time in 2016 that the company moved into calling itself
tronc, chief technology officer
Malcolm CasSelle and chief digital officer Anne Vasquez announced to employees initiatives in content optimization,
machine learning,
artificial intelligence, and increasing the amount of video to 50% of all content by 2017, in an effort to increase reader engagement and ad revenue. The company also introduced a new slogan,
From Pixels to Pulitzers. The video announcement was derided in social and print media as full of
buzzwords and lacking substance. On August 7, 2016, while criticising several aspects of a corporate restructuring that went along with the rebranding (for instance a shift of focus away from hard news towards usage maximization, which he perceived as undue), satirist
John Oliver mocked this new name as "the sound an ejaculating elephant makes", and (ironically) "the sound of a stack of newspapers hitting a dumpster."
The Verge said, "Sounds like a
Millennial falling down the stairs." On March 13, 2017, tronc announced that it would license Arc, the
content management system of
The Washington Post. On September 4, 2017, tronc announced that it had acquired the
New York Daily News. Having been established in 1919 by the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, the
Daily News had been owned by the Tribune Company before its sale to
Robert Maxwell in 1991 and then to
Mortimer Zuckerman in 1993. Tronc purchased the
Daily News for $1 plus the assumption of its liabilities. On July 23, 2018, tronc announced massive layoffs at the paper, and ousted its editor in chief. On February 7, 2018, tronc announced the sale of its California properties (
Los Angeles Times,
San Diego Union-Tribune) to
Patrick Soon-Shiong for $500 million, with the buyer also assuming of $90 million in pension liabilities. The sale closed on June 18 that year and Tribune Publishing announced at the time that it would no longer be referred to as
tronc. this would be confirmed by the company in October of that year. In July 2018 tronc moved their headquarters from
Tribune Tower several blocks south to
One Prudential Plaza. A cyberattack on Tribune Publishing in December 2018 caused printing and delivery issues for several newspapers, including the
Baltimore Sun,
Los Angeles Times, and
Chicago Tribune. It is thought that the malware, which was directed at back-office systems, came from somewhere outside of the United States. In January 2019, Tribune announced that industry veteran
Timothy P. Knight would succeed
Justin Dearborn as CEO. Dearborn had served as CEO since 2016. The company's board of directors also elected former Congressman and chairman of the
House Rules Committee David Dreier to succeed Dearborn as chairman. In December 2019,
Alden Global Capital, a New York City-based
hedge fund, acquired a 32% stake in shares of Tribune Publishing Company.
Acquisition by Alden Tribune Publishing was acquired by
hedge fund Alden Global Capital (Alden) for $635 million, giving its final approval on May 21, 2021, with the transaction officially closing on May 25, 2021, taking the company private. Most of its stake was purchased from Michael Ferro at $13 a share. Considering what it paid for other
tranches, the average price Alden paid for its shares of Tribune Publishing stock is around $12.75. It is offering $17.25/share. Tribune Publishing announced in February 2021 that it had agreed to be wholly acquired by Alden, and the final approval came in May. This deal would have amounted to an overall bid of $680 million, or $18.50/share, in contrast to the $635 million offer from Alden.
Poynter.org observed that fears about the potential Alden acquisition may have obscured that staffing levels at Tribune Publishing's nine metropolitan newspapers fell 30.4% from 2019 to 2020. They write, "Employees and local readers are concerned that Alden would make deep cuts to Tribune if it bought the company. But it seems that's already happening." Hansjörg Wyss announced the third week of April that he was withdrawing from acquisition talks. Shortly thereafter, Tribune Publishing said that it was ending its conversations with Stewart W. Bainum Jr. because they believed that this possible deal could not reasonably be expected, in the absence of Wyss, to lead to a "superior proposal". Wyss had been expected to contribute $505 million to the transaction, with $100 million coming from Bainum. In the wake of the May 21 finalized sale, Bainum expressed continued interest in purchasing the
Baltimore Sun and indicated that if he is unable to do so, he might invest a significant sum in creating a digital alternative. On January 15, 2024, the company sold
The Baltimore Sun to
David D. Smith, executive chairman of
Sinclair Broadcast Group. The purchase price was not immediately disclosed. In February 2024, Tribune Publishing announced it will layoff about 200 employees from the
Freedom Center printing plant in Chicago. The plant will close and be demolished as the property was sold to be used as the site of a casino. Printing operations will be moved to the Paddock Printing Center in
Schaumburg, which was acquired by a subsidiary of Alden in May 2023. ==Publications owned==