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SOMEWHAT startling news this morning that Trinity Mirror is to buy GMG Regional Media, a deal comprising some 32 newspapers and websites, for £44.8 million.

On paper, the deal looks good. It includes the Manchester Evening News, one of the UK’s best known regional titles, while TM is only paying £7.4m to GMG, with the remainder being spent on buying the group out of a historic and long term printing contract.

Sly Bailey, TM chief executive, called the buy a “perfect strategic fit”, and it certainly tallies with the way the UK’s largest regional media business tends to view the country. It has toeholds and strangleholds in many cities and urban centres, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool (and, by extension, North Wales), Cardiff (and South Wales), Belfast, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Chester and Coventry. Even where it does not dominate, such as Scotland, it has presence.

But industry observers already think GMG Regional Media has struck the better deal. It has suffered profit falls similar to those experienced by its titles’ new owner, and there is more than just a whiff of offload as Guardian News & Media seeks to protect its core business and migrate away from print towards online. We are already seeing where the group is going with its new Beatblogger project.

Media Wales has already responded to this – or had its own plans in motion at the same time – by recruiting Ed Walker for its yourCardiff initiative, now under way and already demonstrating the group’s local expertise.

So what is TM playing at? Well, to ask that question, it has to be assumed that news organisations are faced only with an either/or choice when it comes to dead tree media and online. TM is probably still in a position to invest in both, and if all the predictions about the recession’s end are true, it may well have bought GMG Regional Media at close to or at its lowest price.

And while the company has spent heavily on infrastructure in Wales in the past decade – with an £18m printing press in Cardiff Bay and, more recently, new state-of-the-art headquarters in the capital – it is largely regarded both in this country and across the industry as a cost cutter, more likely to be remembered for closing the Neath and Port Talbot Guardians than any investment. It may well be bringing its long experience in restructuring to GMG Regional Media, and will almost certainly ignore those who raise concerns about the long-term viability of this approach.