ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

Heads are rolling at Fortune Small Business. Ad spending is down. Entrepreneur Media can't find a buyer. The "SMB" media landscape is shifting (along with the rest of it), but do small and midsize business people care?

Last week, GM announced a $15.5 billion second quarter loss. Losing that staggering sum is mind blowing until you consider that it ranks only 12th on the all time list of biggest quarterly losses. What does that have to do with business media, much less small and midsized business media? Well slotting in at not only #1, but also #2 on the all time loss list is Time Warner -- GM's loss pales in comparison to the $54.2 billion and $44.9 billion that Time Warner reported in 2002 (adjust for inflation and the gap widens).

And though Time Warner hasn't reported record-breaking loses in a bit, it did expel 14 of the 17 employees at Fortune Small Business. Though FSB isn't dead, it's moving from the editorial group to the custom group, putting editorial control in the hands of the advertisers. The move has less to do with mismanagement at the parent company that market conditions (that economic slowdown thing that has everyone on edge) and a shift in advertising dollars toward online and direct marketing.

The advertising slowdown led another business-focused outlet -- Entrepreneur (disclosure: Entrepreneur content appears on bMighty) to seek a buyer. But with ad revenue off 2.3 percent and credit tightening a planned acquisition is now off. What that means for the long term prospects remain to be seem.

That print publications are troubled is hardly news, and, inevitably, that will affect pubs for the SMB market. But does it matter? As our recent roundup of the Best Blogs for Smaller Businesses demonstrates, there's no shortage of outlets for information, commentary, and analysis for small and growing business decision makers on both the business and the IT side of the house.

In fact, so-called SMB's may not even bother with publications (online or off) designed for the size of the business, gravitating instead toward those that speak to the specific business issues they confront. If you run an import-export business in Miami what's more relevant a general SMB publication or a publication like FloridaShipper that covers container shipping and port developments in Florida?

Where do you go for information, news, commentary, and analysis important to your business?