The advertising slump continues, a downturn that has radically decimated valuations of all media properties, especially content Web site valuations. Even some hard hit magazine properties have had to look for buyers.

Recent magazine sales have included Business 2.0 (AOL Time Warner the purchaser from Imagine Publishing) and EMAP selling its Peterson's division to Primedia. And last week I wrote about the reported potential sale of The Industry Standard.

Last week also saw numerous reports in the press about changes at Ziff Davis Media, publishers of a variety of computer magazines. Ziff Davis Media has terminated a significant number of employees in recent days, including the editor-in-chief of its flagship property, PC Magazine. It has also been reported that Ziff Davis is trying to sell several of its print properties.

Although much of this turmoil is caused by the advertising slump, the press is losing sight of the fact that the Internet is also responsible. Certainly the Internet and content Web sites are not immune to the advertising slowdown. However, the Internet has produced significant change. Whether it is from business-to-business content sites or proliferating Me-zines, reading habits are changing. Both consumers and professionals are getting more and more of their information from the Internet.

The computer magazine arena has been hurt the most by this sea change. We can see this in the valuations of two companies that changed hands over the past 30 months. CMP Media was purchased by United News and Media for over $1 billion (the actual price paid was $950 million for the company, but when one takes into account severance and related obligations, the actual price was in excess of $1 billion). CMP Media is a fine company today. It has leading magazine properties in a variety of technology fields. However, due to the current ad picture and the drainage of readership, it is doubtful that this company could fetch $500 million today.

Likewise, Ziff Davis Media was sold to Willis Stein Partners for approximately $780 million. ZD is another fine company with wonderful magazines, but it too would be fortunate to fetch 50 percent of its sale price of only a few years ago (we should also mention that Ziff Davis reportedly has some $450 million of debt which further depresses the company's overall value).

Both of these companies will survive, but many of their magazines will not. The future of "need to know" technology content is with the Web. Daily and up-to-the-minute reporting is onerous and near impossible for print publications. Web publications have the distribution model for the future. This will be true for business-to-business as well as consumer publications where "need to know" and "need to have" information is of paramount importance.

Fortune Magazine's Deathwatch

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How much longer will Fortune magazine continue its column reporting on "dot-com deaths"? Obviously some editor is taking great pleasure in the demise of Internet companies. A hot word these days in the press is schadenfreude, which is clearly descriptive of the folks at Fortune. It is ironic to see this because Fortune, along with many other business magazines, helped propel Internet euphoria by rarely if ever questioning many of the business models of highflying Internet companies.

And while on the subject of Fortune, columnist Stewart Alsop has written a piece entitled "The Tragedy of Webvan" in the August 13 issue. Alsop was a fan of (the now bankrupt) Webvan and publicly showed his support for the online grocery delivery service by purchasing shares and reporting on the progress of his investment. He rightly points out that Webvan squandered $1 billion. I think the real tragedy is that enough venture capitalists had the hubris to think that the Webvan idea was worthy of $1 billion. The same goes for former online delivery outfits Kozmo and Urban Fetch too.

Alan Meckler is CEO of INT Media Group, the parent company of atNewYork.com. His column appears on Friday. Send feedback and letters to atNewYork@internet.com. To view past viewpoints and columns, go to: http://www.atnewyork.com/views