The company that owns The Citizen and Gloucestershire Echo has agreed to buy the company behind The Daily Express.

Trinity Mirror owns The Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, The Sunday People and over 200 regional newspapers, including big titles like The Birmingham Post and Manchester Evening News. It will pay £126.7m for the publishing assets of Northern & Shell, which include The Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and OK! magazine, as reported by the BBC.

The Daily Express is renowned for front pages about the weather, health and immigration, while The Daily Mirror focuses on knocking the Tories. The chief executive of Trinity Mirror has pledged that they will retain their identities, but there will be savings to be made, for example by sending one reporter to cover a football match for both titles.

Once upon a time the Express and Mirror were Britain's biggest newspapers, with a circulation of eight million, now they have less than one million between them. Circulation continues to fall across the industry and both titles have a strong, and growing, online presence.

Last year, Trinity Mirror changed the Echo and Citizen from daily newspapers to weeklies, it remains to be seen how this takeover will affect the newspaper industry in the future.

What do you think? Email mark@moosemarketingandpr.co.uk