TORONTO - Postmedia Network Inc. confirmed Friday that some of its daily newspapers are cutting jobs in an effort to tighten their operations and refocus on serving an Internet-based readership.

Canada's largest-circulation newspaper chain, made up of the former Canwest dailies, has started laying off some employees and offering voluntary buyouts to others at some of its operations, said Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey.

"Everyone is busy preparing budgets and they're reviewing their needs and their staffing components based upon the digital-first philosophy and any restructuring they have to do with respect to it," Godfrey said in an interview.

"So it's being done on a division-by-division basis."

He said every paper is reviewing its operations but wouldn't give specifics on the overall number of employees that will be affected. The review comes a month and a half after the company -- with about 5,500 employees -- emerged from creditor protection.

"When you go through a situation like this, you're in a basically new era and this is something that was considered right from the beginning," Godfrey added.

A voluntary buyout offer sent to full-time employees of the Ottawa Citizen and obtained by The Canadian Press offered four weeks of pay per year of service with a cap of $150,000, as well as medical and dental coverage for three months after the employee leaves.

Buyout offers were also sent to employees at the Victoria Times Colonist and other papers in the Pacific Newspaper Group -- The Province and The Vancouver Sun, reports said.

"To meet the changing climate that all media are trying to meet it's going to involve some layoffs, and that's the unfortunate part," spokeswoman Phyllise Gelfand said in a phone interview.

However, she declined to offer any specifics on which papers have been impacted or how many people were laid off.

"Staffing requirements and how local operations meet their budgets and run their businesses are made locally, so it's going to differ from operation to operation," she said.

A source with knowledge of the layoffs said Friday that 20 positions, including some part-time jobs, were cut at the Edmonton Journal and there were rumours that 30 more cuts were to come.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that this Wednesday 31 positions were cut at the Calgary Herald and buyouts were announced at Pacific Newspaper Group.

Earlier this year, Postmedia bought the papers from Canwest in a $1.1-billion deal. The company now owns 11 dailies and 26 community newspapers as well as many Internet properties including Canada.com.

The publications were known for generations as the Southam newspaper chain and were sold to Canwest in 2000 by Conrad Black's Hollinger group for $3.2 billion in a blockbuster deal that reshaped Canada's media industry.

Postmedia has said it wants to revamp its business to generate more revenues from digital and Internet operations in the coming years, while keeping a lid on operating costs. Strong financial growth and a solid bottom line will be important if the company hopes to complete an initial public offering on the stock market before the end of the year.

The new company, backed by New York hedge fund Golden Tree Asset Management, now holds some of Canada's largest daily newspapers including the Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen, National Post and Montreal Gazette.

Shaw Communications Inc. (TSX:SJR.B) will acquire Canwest Global's TV assets in a separate deal worth more than $2 billion.

CanWest Global Communications, a Winnipeg company formerly controlled by the Asper family, was forced to restructure and sell off its key businesses after piling up $4 billion in debts from earlier acquisitions, including the Hollinger deal and the purchase of the former Alliance Atlantis TV stations.

When the recession hit and squeezed advertising revenues in the newspaper and TV industries, Canwest's huge debts made it impossible for the company to stay afloat without a major financial restructuring.