Magazines have been much on my mind this week after listening to the great and the good of the publishing industry at the FIPP World Magazine Conference.

But away from the weighty debate about world publishing issues, which can be summarised as "how can we make decent money from digital channels", a more local headline caught my eye. "Newsquest chooses Acorn to print magazine trio" caused me to do a double-take. Newsquest, that'll be the newspaper group that owns Southernprint, right? What is wrong with this picture?

I've nothing against Acorn, and judging by the quotes in the story they've done a great job for Newsquest for many years. But equally it hardly seems the case that the work in question is deeply unsuited to Southernprint's setup. And as has been well documented, prices being what they are in magazine printing I don't imagine Charles and his team in Poole would have priced themselves out of the equation. Perhaps I'm being naïve but when I look at the numbers coming out of Newsquest parent Gannett - which reported UK ad revenues down by the best part of 40% in Q109 - surely it would be better to keep this cash flowing within the group?

The further point of note in all of this is that Acorn is of course part of Trader Media Group, itself owned by Guardian Media Group and Apax Partners. Trader is currently in consultation with employees over proposed downsizing at Apple Web Offset in Warrington. Just as the Newsquest/Acorn story jarred, so I have similar feelings when I open a Guardian or Observer special supplement (the recent Secret Britain guide being a case in point) and see it's printed by, say, Polestar. Whatever happened to keeping it in the family?