These are unsettled times at CanWest as the company tries to centralize certain newspaper work and shed jobs while focusing ever more on the Internet.

Here's a snippet from The Tyee's Nov. 8 story on the announcement of buyouts at the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers:

Enthusing about the future of the Sun on various cyber "platforms," (editor-in-chief Patricia) Graham told her staff, "This is no longer a newspaper. It's a newsroom."

She also indicated that she planned on eventually sending up to 50 per cent of the Sun's page layout work via e-mail to a non-union CanWest operation in Hamilton, Ontario. This practice, already in play for a small number of Sun pages, is currently the subject of a grievance filed by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers of Canada (CEP), which represents workers at the paper.

The Sun and Province have a combined newsroom staff of 275. CanWest would like to see that decrease as many as 30 jobs, bringing the headcount down to 245. But the fun doesn't stop there.

At the non-union Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald, union sources in Vancouver told the Tyee, staff cuts similar in size to those at the Sun and Province could conceivably be achieved in the old fashioned way, by direct layoffs. An anonymous source in the Herald newsroom said on Nov. 7 that Calgary management was talking about simply laying off 10 staff in the newsroom there.

However, a source in the Edmonton Journal newsroom told The Tyee that the paper's top management was in a meeting with employees on Wednesday evening (at 5 p.m. Vancouver time) about staff reduction targets at the Journal. The source, who declined to be quoted by name, said that his understanding was that Journal management was offering voluntary severance packages in its first attempt to hit reduction targets of up to 20 newsroom staff.

Here's how The Globe and Mail summed up the newsroom cuts in a Nov. 9 story:

... As many as 10 positions are being eliminated in Calgary through layoffs. About 15 positions could be affected at the Montreal Gazette's 155-person newsroom, with similar numbers expected in Ottawa and Edmonton. The Victoria Times Colonist, a smaller newsroom with roughly 80 people, may not be affected as much.

In a story published today, the Globe looked at the role of Hamilton-based, non-unionized CanWest Editorial Services in facilitating the change:

As Winnipeg-based CanWest looks to cut newspaper costs and shift more resources to producing news for the Internet, a larger number of news pages from its 10 city papers will be produced at the CES offices in coming months.

Several of CanWest's papers - which include the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun - will have portions of their national and international news pages assembled there, along with auto and travel sections.

The new strategy has caused a string of job cuts and buyouts, which have trickled out paper by paper in the past two weeks. Taken in full, the reductions could total between 80 to 100 jobs, marking one of the larger cutbacks the industry has seen of late, next to 120 layoffs at Quebecor Inc.'s Sun Media chain last year. ...

Jamie Pitblado, vice-president of promotions and community investment at CanWest's two Vancouver papers, the Sun and the Province, said the decision will allow CanWest to invest more resources in its Internet-based news operations, which could include adding positions on its websites. "I think we're seeing a transition from a newspaper to a news-gathering organization. By moving some of this work out of here [to Hamilton], it will provide us with an opportunity to focus more energy and resources on driving local content, both online and in the paper."

Focusing on the Web has become the mantra of media operations as online audiences multiply. CanWest wants to staff its Web properties around-the-clock, or at least 18 hours a day, at most papers. One official cited a massive residential fire in Edmonton this summer that began overnight. The event caused a surge in traffic on the Edmonton Journal's website in the early morning, but the online story was delayed due to staffing, the official said.