Poke all the fun you want, and yes the name is ridiculous, but there’s something up at tronc’s downtown operations.

Tronc, the newspaper business formerly known as Tribune Publishing, looks as if it’s about to have the longtime home of the Los Angeles Times sold out from under it. Renovations are coming, and some of the half-vacant property may be torn down to make way for apartments and retail.

Tribune Media, the wealthier sibling that owns the real estate housing tronc’s publishing ventures, already leases significant portions of the Times complex to unrelated businesses.

The Times is a tenant, and maybe it shouldn’t be.

There’s a lot of history wrapped up in that building, and there may well be a place for it somewhere. But let’s set aside the ridiculous new-media speak that came with tronc’s rebranding and ask if the latest iteration of the Times really needs to be on Spring Street.

Sure, the cops and City Hall are across the street, but what portion of the paper’s diminishing staff needs to be able to walk across the street to do their jobs effectively?

Not the foreign desk. Not the business desk. Entertainment coverage? Probably not. Ad sales? One supposes they are spending most of their time away from the office drumming up business.

At a time when reporters look for sources using Twitter, when they are reachable by mobile anywhere at any time and can file stories from a Starbucks, does the Times really need to hang on to its slowly crumbling downtown monument?

We ask in our online poll this week whether the paper, in keeping with tronc’s tech speak-crusted new approach and artificial intelligence licenses, might not be better off in Playa Vista.

That may be a bridge too far – and too expensive. But the paper seems as a widow wandering a big house filled with memories of a past that’s gone. It may not be such a bad thing to find a smaller, lighter, airier place and start afresh.