Trinity Mirror is to buy Local World, the company which owns the Cornish Guardian, West Briton and Cornishman newspapers.
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“Since then we have led the industry on many fronts”.
The deal gives it control of more than 200 titles.
Local World, the company which owns the West Briton and The Cornishman, has been sold to Trinity Mirror, in a move described as “a vote of confidence in local press”.
“Our focus on content and subsequent deeper audience engagement has enabled us to deliver strong digital revenue growth”. Local World is a business we know and respect and by combining it with Trinity Mirror we will create an organisation of scale, with the talent and financial capacity to invest and adapt to the rapidly changing media landscape.
He added that on completion of the deal the entire Local World Board would be dissolved and he would be leaving to pursue other interests.
It means a host of Midland titles will be brought together under one group, from Trinity Mirror’s existing Birmingham Post and Mail and Coventry Telegraph to Stoke-based The Sentinel, Derby Telegraph, Nottingham Post and Tamworth Herald.
Local World includes the former Daily Mail regional titles under the Northcliffe umbrella and the Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns 38.7% of Local World, said it would receive about £73million.
Trinity Mirror chief executive Simon Fox said today: “By bringing our two organisations together, we create not just the UK’s largest regional news publisher but also bring together a unique combination of regional and national brands”.
Local World owns 83 print publications including 16 daily titles and 36 weeklies.
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Local World’s digital portfolio already attracts a growing digital audience with 24 million monthly unique browsers and approximately 167 million monthly page views at June 2015.
