TORONTO - Three veterans of Canada's media industry are taking a swing at buying a trio of major Canwest newspapers including the Montreal Gazette in a bid that could force the media conglomerate to consider selling off its assets piece by piece.

The consortium of investors, headlined by former Canadian senator Jerry Grafstein, said Monday they are only interested in picking up the National Post, The Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen.

If their bid was to succeed, Canwest would have to find someone else to buy the rest of their newspaper operations, which include the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Victoria Times-Colonist and two Vancouver dailies, the Sun and Province. Canwest has said it believes selling the assets as a whole is a better option.

Grafstein is joined in the bid by former Global TV executive and Montreal Star editor Raymond Heard and writer and broadcaster Beryl Wajsman, known for his colourful appearance at the Gomery inquiry.

The group said it has "received strong financial commitments" and is in the process of filing a bid to buy the three dailies. It hopes to begin its "due diligence" investigation into the papers' operating data within the next few weeks.

Future of newspapers

"I'm a believer in the future of newspapers," Grafstein said in a telephone interview.

"We believe that there's a strong role for Canadian newspapers in every community. We think they should be locally owned and controlled and we have very interesting and important ideas about how to generate attention and interest on the Internet to support these newspapers."

Canwest Global Communications Corp. placed many of its media properties under protection from creditors last year and announced last week an auction process for buyers interested in its newspaper and television assets.

The latest bid cherry picks from the Canwest's basket of newspapers, and selects some of those with the largest circulation.

Canwest and its lenders have previously made a case for selling the newspapers as one operation and have said that a number of logical synergies exist between them, including integrated websites led by Canada.com and a relationship with the Post's newsroom, which delivers an array of national news content to local papers.

Going local

Grafstein said he disagrees that Canwest's current operating model is the only option for the newspapers.

"If you take a look at the history of newspapers in North America, the strongest papers are those that are rooted in each community," he said.

"I believe it's from the bottom up, not the top down."

Each of the leaders in the latest bid has played a prominent role in Canadian media. Grafstein, who retired from the senate Jan. 2 after turning 75, was a founder of Citytv in Toronto, while Heard worked as editor at the London Observer News Service on top of his roles at Global and the Montreal Star.

Wajsman's politics

Wajsman is editor of The Suburban, Quebec's biggest English-language weekly, although most Canadians will remember him for his remarks during the Gomery inquiry in 2005. After Wajsman testified, he told Montreal's Le Devoir that he planned to run for leadership of the Liberal party, even though Paul Martin had banned him from the party at the time.

He declined to discuss his political plans on Monday.

"We're not putting partisanship into this," Wajsman said. "This is a standalone project, and (if) we do this, I'll be pretty happy for the rest of my life."

Wajsman emphasized the importance of the Montreal Gazette on the local community, while also broadening its audience to include more new Canadians.

"I don't think there's anything more important than expanding immigrant-based non-Francophone communities," he said.

"They need to be served by local newspapers, the web is not enough, they need to be served by vigorous journalists."