Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News exist, at least in part, to carry on a city tabloid rivalry that lets blogs have a good laugh by posting their front pages side by side and counting the puns. But the two papers are also victims of an industry reality: printing newspapers is, like, expensive. So they are firming up talks that began in May, when Long Island's Newsday was in play, to share back-end expenses by joining forces, with printing and home delivery operations being rolled into one cost-saving machine. (It's unclear whether the papers would combine their advertising operations, which is a whole other animal.) Of course, such a team up would further muddy the waters between the Post and News never-ending — despite multiples truces — bashing of the competition, through their respective gossip and business columns, about circulation woes, advertising fears, and intra-office scandal. Not that either paper is exactly a stranger to conflicts of interest. [NYT]