That's a stark reversal from a few years ago, when Tronc's overloaded balance sheet forced the company to accept an equity infusion from Chicago investor Michael Ferro and made it prime takeover bait for Gannett, the publisher of USA Today.

Publisher Ross Levinsohn was placed on leave last month amid allegations of sexual harassment at previous jobs, and yet another new editor-in-chief was appointed to get things back on track.

The California papers being sold account for a little more than 40 percent of Tronc's adjusted Ebitda over the last 12 months, as reported by the company in its regulatory filings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

That hardly seems the way Ferro wanted things to go, given his aspirations of a cross-country news network that he could morph into a profitable, growing enterprise via artificial intelligence and heavy cost cuts.

Now the question is whether Gannett decides to bid on the remaining papers in Tronc's empire, which include the Chicago Tribune and, as of last year, the New York Daily News.

The L.A. Times wasn't vital to Gannett's strategy of using scale to cut costs, negotiate better deals with advertisers and add heft to its digital platform.

He's talked a big game in the past about using machine vision technology to allow readers to generate video based on photos in physical newspapers by sliding a camera across the page.