Tronc shifts News jobs to Chicago

So much for being New York’s “hometown paper.”

Tronc, the parent of the dwindling Daily News, will move roughly two dozen jobs to its Chicago headquarters.

The move west of the production and design jobs is part of a company initiative to save money.

Tronc paid $1 in September for Mort Zuckerman’s teetering tabloid.

Faced with losses of about $30 million, Tronc immediately began swinging the budget ax — laying off dozens of back office employees and shifting those jobs to the Windy City.

Tronc now has its sights on the newsroom itself, which has shrunk to just 85 jobs after five years of cuts.

Tim Knight, the newly appointed president, recently broke the news of the shifting jobs to the chain of newspapers — including the Chicago Trib- une, the Baltimore Sun and the Allentown Morning Call.

“Like other leading news organizations that have taken bold steps to hasten their digital transformation, we will create a new central business unit headquartered in Chicago, called the Design and Production Studio, or DPS,” Knight said in a memo.

“The DPS will perform editorial production of the print newspapers for each of our markets,” Knight said.

A Tronc spokeswoman said she was not able to comment on personnel decisions, but a source familiar with the situation put the number at about two dozen.

Separately, Tronc is expected to close the sale of the LA Times to biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong in the next month and a half.

The sale, along with the unloading of a San Diego paper, will yield Tronc about $500 million.