The Daily News, the brawny New York tabloid owned by Tronc has gone on a major job cut in its newsroom. The Daily News was once the largest-circulated paper in the country. Immediately after a brief meeting journalist in various departments, from sports to metro, received formal notification that they had been laid off by Tronc, the media company based in Chicago that bought the paper last year.

People were crying and hugging each other, said Scott Widener, a researcher who had worked at The News since 1990. In its heyday, The News was a staple publication of the city’s working class, an elbows-out tabloid that thrived when it dug into crime and corruption. It served as a model for The Daily Planet, the paper that counted Clark Kent and Lois Lane among its reporters, and for the scrappy tabloid depicted in the 1994 movie “The Paper.”

With Tronc’s firing of more than 40 newsroom employees — including 25 of 34 sports journalists and most of the photo department — The News joins the ranks of walking-wounded papers at a time when readers have gravitated toward the quick-hit convenience of digital media.

Under Jim Rich, the editor who also lost his job, The News positioned itself as an unapologetically liberal counterpuncher to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. Jim Rich, who declined to comment for this article, transformed the front page — “the wood,” in the tabloid parlance — into a venue for criticizing and often ridiculing President Trump.

The News commemorated the president’s appearance with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland, with the headline “Open Treason.” Beneath the bold black letters was a cartoon of Mr. Trump holding hands with a shirtless Mr. Putin; with his other hand, Mr. Trump was firing a pistol at Uncle Sam’s head.

Tronc announced that Mr. Rich’s replacement would be Robert York, a media executive who has spent most of his career in San Diego. In 2016, Tronc named Mr. York the editor and publisher of The Morning Call, a newspaper owned by the company in Allentown. The layoff did not come out of anywhere. The News has lost millions of dollars as it struggled to replace the revenue once reliably provided by the advertisements that fattened its papers and the readers whose morning routines included a stop at the newsstand.  Many feel that this decision is an outcome of digitalization but Tronc assures that they remain committed to print.