Four ex-staffers sparked the Daily News probe

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least four ex-Daily News staffers approached officials from Tronc in December with allegations of sexual harassment against

Rob Moore, the paper’s No. 2 editor, Media Ink has learned.

The complaint was filed anonymously, complicating the internal probe launched by Tronc.

NPR first revealed on Monday that Tronc was investigating Moore over allegations of sexual harassment after receiving a complaint in December.

Weeks after the anonymous women filed the complaint, Moore has not been suspended, sources said.

In November, weeks before the complaint was filed with Tronc’s HR department, Moore, the managing

editor/news, was interviewed as a potential replacement for Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Arthur Browne.

Browne had announced he would step down on Dec. 31 after Tronc bought the money-losing tabloid from Mort Zuckerman for $1.

Moore was eventually passed over, and last week, Tronc appointed Jim

Kirk, a former editor-in-chief and publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, to be the interim editor-in-chief.

Kirk was most recently the interim executive editor at the Tronc-owned Los Angeles Times, which had its own sexual-harassment controversy erupt late last week.

One day after a Jan. 18 NPR story alleging past misconduct by the LA Times Publisher Ross Levinsohn, he took a voluntary leave without pay as that investigation continues on the West Coast. (Levinsohn’s alleged misconduct took place before he joined the LA Times.)

Kirk is said to be overseeing the investigation in New York.

In LA, the Sidley Austin law firm has been hired to run the investigation.

Rumors are swirling that the same firm may step into the Daily News investigation — but that could not be confirmed at press time.

The four women who lodged the complaint against Moore are no longer with the Daily News. They came forward to detail a long history of bullying and inappropriate sexual comments — in face-to-face meetings, social media, texts and voice mails, Media Ink has learned.

A fifth ex-Daily News employee, a photographer, said that she was repeatedly asked out on a date by Moore — who, she told Media Ink, described himself on social media as “body beautiful.”

“You look hot today,” Moore texted the photographer roughly five years ago, she told Media Ink in an interview on Tuesday. “Why don’t we hang out and get it done?” Moore’s advances were ignored. She was later among a group of photographers who were laid off.

“There was a long series of incredibly uncomfortable comments about people’s clothing and about their bodies,” a sixth woman, who used to work with Moore at the paper, told Media Ink.

The woman never complained while working there.

“I would call it bullying with some sexual stuff in there,” she said. “He’d send e-mails and call people at 3 a.m.”

A seventh woman, an ex-Daily News reporter, said, “Rob Moore would repeatedly circulate FALSE rumors that claimed female staffers had propositioned him for sex, or that he had affairs with them.” Neither Kirk nor Grant Whit

more, Tronc’s new general manager of eastern digital papers, could be reached for comment.

Moore did not return calls seeking comment.

Disgruntled poets

With the Meredith acquisition of Time Inc. expected to close in about a week, there appears to be a “Dead Poets Society”-like attitude forming inside the publisher of Time, e, People, Sports Illustrated d and InStyle.

Rich Battista, the current and last CEO of Time, who could not right the iconic publisher in a sea stormy with declining ad sales, was given a tribute video made by his former top lieutenants.

The video’s conclusion appears to be modeled after the famous “Dead Poets Society” scene in which Robin Williams, playing Professor John Keating, is fired. As the headmaster orders him out of the classroom, his high school students — who grew to love poetry after Keating formed the so-called Dead Poets Society — defiantly stand on top of their desks, saying, “O Captain! My Captain!”

In the Time Inc. tribute video, members of the executive class, including Chief Content Officer Alan

Murray, President Jen Wong, head of human resources Greg Gian

grande and at least a half-dozen others, were all filmed standing on their desk, and one by one proclaiming, “O Captain! My Captain!”

Wong and Giangrande are scheduled to be fired along with Battista when the deal is sealed — probably before Jan. 28. While the Keating-headmaster clash is not exactly like the Time Inc.-Meredith culture gap, it does show the depth of one of the issues facing the merger. Iowa-based Meredith is pledging $400 million to $500 million in synergy savings over the next two years.

Unlike the Keating character, Battista, Wong and Giangrande are expected to walk away with seven-figure severance packages.