Tronc, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers, has laid off numerous employees who worked in its Tribune Interactive division, including former Times editor-in-chief Lewis D’Vorkin.
D’Vorkin, who held the editor-in-chief post for three months starting in October of last year, departed as chief content officer of Tribute Interactive, a newly formed digital business unit of Tronc.
D’Vorkin told the Los Angeles Times that the decision to leave was mutual, and said his “heart just wasn’t in” Tribune Interactive’s work.
The other layoffs, announced Thursday, spanned Tribune Interactive’s video and online content teams, who were given reorganization as the reason behind their dismissals. They were informed of the decision by an HR manager after appearing at a scheduled staff meeting to be headed by D’Vorkin.
According to reports, the Tribune Interactive team had been feeling abandoned by management, and were especially concerned when executives like D’Vorkin moved from the downtown L.A. offices to the Westside without giving the rest of the team notice.
The dismissals are the latest in a series of upheavals at Tronc and the Los Angeles Times over the past few months, with the Times’ publisher, Ross Levinsohn, placed on unpaid leave after NPR reported that Levinsohn had engaged in inappropriate workplace behavior before arriving at the Times.
Tronc also announced in February that it had agreed to sell the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Los Angeles biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong.
