Twitter Reacted Very, Uh, Strongly To #Tronc

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Jun 2, 2016 10:47PM

We may have already reached peak tronc.

"Tronc," is the Tribune Publishing company's new brand and possible answer to our darkest fears about the future of journalism. It's also been the laughing stock of the media-centric internet, since around 2 p.m. when mentions of the peculiar onomatopoeia started to skyrocket. On Thursday, heads of Tribune Publishing informed employees that the company, which split from the Tribune Company last year and publishes the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times, would hence forth be known as tronc. All lowercase, like the kids with their hip tech startups do it.

Market Watch brings us a graph of tronc's meteoric rise to power:

Somehow, tronc stands for "Tribune online content," and its rebranding will go into effect later this month. Tronc and its Nickelodeon-inspired lowercase logo were soon trending on Twitter, and spawning meme after meme in tribute to its ability to shuck off its old-media brand, while somehow remaining always-already passé. The hot takes are a-coming, we're counting on it, but in the meantime we'll satisfy ourselves basking in the brand's swift meme-ification: