The 600 B Street building in downtown San Diego, location of the Union-Tribune's new offices. Courtesy Lincoln Property Co.
The 600 B Street building in downtown San Diego, location of the Union-Tribune’s new offices. Courtesy Lincoln Property Co.

The newspaper chain that publishes The San Diego Union-Tribune and Los Angeles Times announced Thursday that it is renaming itself “tronc Inc.,” effective June 20.

Meanwhile, a San Diego-based investor, Capital Structures Realty Advisors, has filed a lawsuit against Tribune Publishing Co. for continuing to reject proposed buyout offers by the rival Gannett Co.

Tribune issued a statement saying its new moniker, a play on Tribune online content, “captures the essence of the company’s mission” to create and distribute material as it transforms from a legacy news company to a technology and content firm.

“Our industry requires an innovative approach and a fundamentally different way of operating,” Tribune Chairman Michael Ferro said.

“Our transformation strategy — which has attracted over $114 million in growth capital — is focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the user experience and better monetize our world- class content in order to deliver personalized content to our 60 million monthly users and drive value for all of our stakeholders,” Ferro said. “Our rebranding to tronc represents the manner in which we will pool our technology and content resources to execute on our strategy.”

On the same day, Tribune will also switch its stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq. The company will trade under the symbol TRNC.

–City News Service