The Tribune-Review Publishing Co. yesterday announced sweeping changes in its management structure, essentially reducing four of its six newspapers to large news bureaus and shifting their management, editing and design to offices of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Employees at the company's onetime flagship paper, the Tribune-Review of Greensburg, said they were told to expect layoffs there as editing of that newspaper moves from its offices on Cabin Hill Drive in Greensburg to the Clark Building on Pittsburgh's North Side.

"They told us point-blank that there would be layoffs," said one employee at the Greensburg Tribune-Review who, like others, asked not to be identified. Workers at all of the affected papers said they were told the layoffs would hit every one of the company's daily publications, including Pittsburgh.

On Tuesday, Tom Stewart, the editor of the Greensburg Tribune-Review, announced that he was leaving the paper, the first signal of the management shakeup that insiders said they expect to continue for several weeks.

In addition to the Greensburg Tribune-Review, the consolidation affects the Valley News Dispatch, Kittanning Leader-Times and the Connellsville Courier.

All of those newspapers will now be edited and designed at the Clark Building, headquarters for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The papers will retain their separate names, according to persons who attended a series of meetings at each newspaper.

In addition to the daily newspapers, advertising and circulation also will be consolidated for the company's Gateway Publications, a chain of weeklies purchased last year by the parent firm.

A sixth paper in the chain, the Valley Independent in Monessen, will retain its staff of editors. The Valley Independent is the sole publication among the six with a unionized newsroom and a written contract.

Employees, who spoke on condition they not be named, saying they feared for their jobs, said the Greensburg Tribune-Review and the Valley News Dispatch would no longer have their own top editors.

Instead, their newsrooms would be managed by a middle-level editor who would report to Frank Craig, editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Neither Craig nor company President Ed Harrell, to whom inquiries were referred, could be reached for comment.

General managers were eliminated at all of the newspapers, in favor of a new system that appoints a pair of district managers, each overseeing three newspapers. A similar system also will be put in place for the chain's advertising department.

"Everyone's worried and preparing their resumes," said one employee at the Valley News Dispatch.

In Greensburg, which has traditionally been the firm's most profitable and highest-circulation publication, some staff expressed anger at the changes. Employees throughout the company expect to learn in coming weeks whether they will be kept on.

Earlier this week, advertising director Andrea Mroz was let go, as was Kraig Cawley, the general manager of the Valley News Dispatch. Cawley, at one time a vice president of the Tribune-Review Co., had risen through the ranks in earlier times and had been viewed by many within the company as a potential successor to Harrell.

Cawley was reported cleaning out his office yesterday and did not return phone calls.

Greensburg, which has a circulation estimated at 99,000 on Sundays and 53,000 weekdays, was the first of the papers purchased by Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking and oil fortune and a longtime underwriter of conservative political causes. Scaife established a Pittsburgh edition of his newspaper in December 1992, toward the end of an eight-month strike that put The Pittsburgh Press, the city's then-dominant newspaper, out of business.

Sources close to the publisher said the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has failed to turn a profit in its 12 years of existence, and the Greensburg edition has subsidized the effort.

Lou Ottey, who was fired as circulation manager for the Greensburg paper last week, said a general downturn in newspaper circulation compounded problems because daily newspapers in Connellsville, Monessen and Kittanning included delivery of the Sunday Tribune-Review, and when those papers lost circulation, the Tribune-Review's Sunday figures were also hit.

The Valley News Dispatch produces its own Sunday edition.

Last night, in Greensburg, one mid-level editor complained bitterly about the planned reductions in staff.

"For years we financed their shenanigans in Pittsburgh and now they've turned on us," he said.