Best thing about Michael Ferro turning Tribune Media into “Tronc”

The “Content Funnel” will become generic Gannett

Much mock has rightly been made of the wild surmises about the future of Tribune Media’s new incarnation, with proclamations of the possibility of hundreds of videos a week being produced and dumped onto the internet via automation. A Pew Research study released in October suggests that younger adults don’t care about video, but want to get their news via forms of text. (Ruh-roh.) A promotional video full of executive proclamations, released after the redubbing in spring 2016, swam with words, some nouns, some verbs. “We produce tons of great content every single day. We’re really focused on how we deliver it to people in a way they want to consume it more and more,” one attested. “One of the key ways we’re going to harness the power of our journalism is to have an optimization group. This Tronc team will work with all of the local markets, to harness the power of our local journalism, feed it into a funnel, and then optimize it so we reach the biggest global audience possible,” said another. Gannett, on the other hand, if the nearly $800 million absorption of the Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other survivors of legacy media goes through, will likely do what it does with its hundred-plus other daily papers: simplify, add pages from USA Today and kick most of Michael Ferro’s visionary leap back to the halcyon days of 2016.

Best of Chicago 2016