Just when it didn't seem like another drop of blood was left to squeeze from its various Alberta stones, Don Mills, Ont.-based Postmedia Network Inc. pushed another five senior newsroom employees out the door of the Edmonton Journal on Friday.

The carnage at the Journal included two veteran copy editors, two graphic artists and a National Newspaper Award winning photographer.

Reports from Alberta's deep south indicate a similar number of newsroom staffers were made to walk the plank at the Calgary Herald about a week earlier.

It has been fascinating to watch the Conservative campaign strategy evolve over the past two weeks, working in tandem with Sun TV in a quest to secure a Harper majority, and to destroy the opposition leaders.

Aside from the standard issued talking points submitted by the Conservative war room and subsequently written into Sun TV scripts, the Tories are running a co-ordinated effort with their Sun Media counterparts as they try desperately to reach that magical number of 155 seats.

Take for instance, week number one (April 18-22) where the focus was entirely on Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal Party, and the 'threat' of a coalition:

Brian Lilley, on Ignatieff and the Liberals:

All across Canada yesterday afternoon, journalists were filing cheerful little stories about the latest results from the Newspaper Audience Databank and how they provide heartening news for the local rag and, indeed, the entire newspaper industry.

After NADBank yesterday privately released its 2009-2010 readership results to the newspapers in the communities surveyed, the resulting story in the Edmonton Journal was headlined "Readership numbers good news for The Journal."

Finance Vice-President David Becker and Reader Sales and Marketing VP Stroud McDonald are among the latest 18 Edmonton Journal employees out the door in the aftermath of the Postmedia Network Inc. takeover of the Canwest newspaper chain.

THIS JUST IN: It turns out the so-called Ground Zero Mosque -- the excuse for an outpouring of Islamophobic hatred from the tip of Manhattan to the pages of the Edmonton Sun -- isn't even at Ground Zero. (It's not really a mosque, either, but never mind that.)

A story in one Edmonton newspaper and a wrongful dismissal lawsuit by a former political columnist at another have pulled back the veil a little on the mentality that fuels the mainstream media's blockade of stories about the labour movement, liberal political parties and other progressive causes in Canada.