ChasNote

From Forbes, the September issue of Business 2.0 will be its last.

“…media outlets focused on startups and new technology haven’t shared in Silicon Valley’s resurgence. Venerable tech title InfoWorld cranked out its final print edition in April. One-time venture capital bible Red Herring–under new management since the tech bust–has struggled to pay its bills. PC Magazine’s editor-in-chief left that magazine after ad pages fell 33.5% through March of this year. Even one-time online powerhouse CNET Networks is reporting growing losses as the companies it covers flourish.

“Part of the explanation: Ad dollars that used to be spent touting new products in tech publications are being spent buying ads via sophisticated, keyword-based ad systems such as Google’s–a phenomenon that has helped power the tech industry’s resurgence. Meanwhile, fast-moving, low-overhead blogs are pushing into the territory once dominated by magazines such as the Industry Standard and Upside, and they’re sucking up many of the ad dollars that remain.”

An earlier Forbes article put even more of the blame on companies like FM:

“Meanwhile, Industry Standard founder John Battelle is keeping the bonfire of the print titles burning. His Federated Media Publishing is selling ads on more than 100 blogs, giving ad buyers the ability to spend big money on a collection of highly specialized sites–many of them focused on tech–that suit their needs. ‘If Cisco has to spend, I don’t know, a couple of million dollars on a trade campaign, they are not spending it with Red Herring or Business 2.0. They are spending it with Federated Media, with bloggers who cover the sector,’ says Rafat Ali, editor and publisher of online media tracker PaidContent.org.”