What would a merger of Xerox and RR Donnelly mean to magazine publishing?

It's early days to come to any conclusions, but a talked-about (talked about = more than gossip, less than an established fact) merger of the giant Chicago-based printer RR Donnelley & Sons with Xerox Corporation could have far-reaching impacts on the magazine publishing industry. 

The news lifted the shares of both companies. Xerox had a market value of US$9.6 billion and Donnelly US$3.9 billion. Both companies have been struggling with the disruption of the physical printing world as a result of mobile and cloud-based services. 

Donnelly, which had said it was planning to split its business in three publicly traded parts, has not done so yet. Xerox,best known as a virtual synonym for photocopying, said in January that it would split into a document technology company (printers and copiers) with $11 billion in revenue and a business process outsourcing company with $7 billion.

"The company (Xerox) been trying to turn itself around," said a story in Fortune, "shifting focus to software and services as corporate customers cut printing costs and consumers moved to mobile devices."

The merger would be likely to result in parts of Donnelly being folded into the two Xerox-derived companies.