UPDATE 1-Springer, Polish publisher Infor to combine dailies
* Springer, Infor to publish combined daily newspaper
* Springer source says price tag below 10 mln euros
(Releads with confirmation, adds quote, details)
By Adrian Krajewski and Kuba Jaworowski
WARSAW, June 2 (Reuters) - German media group Axel Springer (SPRGn.DE) agreed on Tuesday to combine its struggling Polish daily Dziennik with a rival published by Infor to better deal with the shrinking newspaper market.
The two companies said Springer would take a 49 percent stake in Infor's publishing arm which prints the Gazeta Prawna newspaper.
A source close to the company told Reuters earlier Springer would also pay a small amount of less than 10 million euros ($14.2 million).
"The goal of the signed agreement is to publish a joint daily newspaper from Fall 2009," Infor said in a statement.
Springer's Dziennik, which it launched three years ago, sells 151,000 copies, but has seen its circulation melt away over the last year, losing ground to Agora's AGOD.WA Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Infor's Gazeta Prawna, which concentrates and legal and business news, has an average circulation of some 72,000.
Springer, the publisher of Poland's best-selling tabloid Fakt, had also considered buying the Polish government's stake in the Rzeczpospolita newspaper before backing out of the bidding earlier this year.
Poland's newspaper market, following the trend around the world, has seen the global financial crisis compound the problem of falling circulation as advertisers slash spending, especially on print media. (Additional reporting by Andreas Kroener in Frankfurt; Writing by Chris Borowski; Editing by David Holmes)
