A memo circulated by the National Post’s editor-in-chief last week reveals that the Toronto newsroom is restructuring to become a “digital-only operation.”

“We are, of course, continuing to publish print products from this newsroom, but the amount of attention that it occupies will be isolated to a much smaller portion of this operation,” Anne Marie Owens wrote.

At a staff meeting on October 31, Owens told the newsroom there’s no schedule for cancelling the production of newspapers — but indicated that is on the horizon, according to sources present at the meeting.

“Though there are not yet any planned timed cutbacks in print, there are no timelines for cancelling print editions yet at the Post or at any other papers, but the print changes will be significant,” Owens said at the meeting. “There will be more centralization, there will be more common content and there will be aggressive new deadlines, and that’s for all the markets. So we were given a very clear digital direction.

“It’s not like the Rogers scenario where different magazines there know certain dates they’re turning into different frequency. To be honest, that’s easier to plan for because you have a hard date. None of the papers have a hard date.”

Owens’s memo reveals more about changes expected to roll out across the Postmedia newspaper chain in the coming weeks. It follows a mid-October announcement from Postmedia in which the company declared it plans to slash 20 per cent of its salary expenses and would offer voluntary buyout packages as a means of reaching that target. Postmedia staff had until November 11 to apply for a buyout.

Owens wrote to iPolitics Thursday morning to clarify the memo.

“The National Post is not going digital-only. We are restructuring our newsroom towards being digital-only,” she wrote in an email. “I stated quite clearly, in my newsroom memo and in my town hall, that we were continuing to produce print products — many of them, in fact. By isolating the focus of attention paid to print in our reorganization — with a print hub — we are doing what many forward-thinking newsrooms, like the New York Times and others, are doing.”

The memo said the newsroom will be divvied into two “hubs” — print and presentation. She said Mick Higgins will run the former, and oversee “the slotting and content decisions” for the various sections of the National Post and Financial Post.

The “presentation hub” — run by Ron Wadden — will be responsible for special treatment given to stories, and will be “primarily digitally focused,” Owens wrote.

The memo also confirms that 20 National Post and Financial Post staff will be leaving the paper. The list of names are in the copy of the memo pasted below.

Owens wrote that columnist Kevin Libin will now oversee both the National Post’s and Financial Post’s comment sections. Libin is well-known for being a commentator who often writes critically about climate change activists and government initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The National Post was founded in 1998 by Conrad Black, who had previously purchased the Financial Post from Sun Media in 1997. The Financial Post became the National Post’s business section.

Postmedia has been cutting full-time jobs since 2010 as part of its debt reduction plan. The company recently completed its debt restructuring plan in early October. Prior to that, Postmedia owed approximately $648 million to its debt holders.

In financial documents released October 20, Postmedia said in the fourth quarter, its net loss increased $99.4 million and its print advertising sales declined by more than 20 per cent.

At the same time Postmedia is gutting its newsroom operations, The Globe and Mail reported Wednesday that the newspaper chain’s top executives received $2.3 million in retention bonuses.

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Hi all,

I want to give you an update on the voluntary buyouts and the changes we are going to be making to our newsroom in the coming weeks. We’ll have an informal huddle where I can answer your questions in the newsroom at 1pm today.

As I told you in the earlier town hall, the focus of this newsroom reorganization will be geared towards being a digital-only operation. We are, of course, continuing to publish print products from this newsroom, but the amount of attention that it occupies will be isolated to a much smaller portion of this operation.

Mick Higgins will run the print hub, which will be where all the attention to print resides. This one dynamic hub will oversee the slotting and content decisions for NP, NP2, FP, FP2, Comment and FP comment and A&L daily.

Ron Wadden will run the presentation hub, which tackles all the special treatments that we want to give to stories. It will be primarily digitally focused, but it will also pay attention to specialty print items.

The new deadlines from PES – which are considerably earlier for every single section — will help enforce our new digital focus.

Erin and Jordan and Nicole and Dustin have come up with new workflows for their teams that rely on earlier starts to the day and a full integration with web. Kevin is going to take on oversight for all of comment — both FP and NP comment — rebuilding it into a digital powerhouse. In this new universe, there will not be a news desk and a digital desk—they will be one, seamlessly connected team.

Editors will be trained to post the stories they are handling; reporters will be trained to produce their own stories. All of this will begin immediately and continue through the next several weeks.

Your editors will meet with you to talk through some of the specific changes impacting your teams. We have moved quickly to come up with a plan, but the scope of this change to the way we do things is huge, and it will be a bumpy ride for all of us.

We are losing a fifth of this newsroom to voluntary buyouts. People will be redeployed to help fill the gaps and to bolster the newsroom reorganization. We have already begun talking to people about new roles, and will continue over the coming days. We want to implement these changes as quickly as possible, and we’re going to need people in place to make it happen.

These are the talented people who will be leaving our newsroom in the coming weeks:

Angela Hickman, Gary Loewen, John Shmuel, David Yasvinski, Al Zabas, Jesse Kline, Damon Van der Linde, Brian Hutchinson, Araminta Wordsworth, Genevieve Biloski, Nancy Truman, Graham Runciman, Gord Isfeld, Liza Sardi, Chloe Cushman, Kelly McParland, Jeff Wasserman, Ron Hartwell, David Berry, Gillian Grace.

We are sad to say goodbye – which we’ll do in a single farewell gathering on Dec. 2 – but wish them all the best.

For all of us who remain, this will be an exciting period of change – on a scale that we haven’t yet experienced. You are an unbelievably resilient and energetic and creative bunch and I have no doubt of our success. Your editors and I are here to support you, and walk you through the changes every step of the way. When we come out the other side of this, we will be a newsroom transformed, and galvanized by this change.

AMO