Federal Computer WEEKLY?

Yes, it was a busy Friday around FCW's world headquarters in Falls Church, Va. In case you missed it, FCW's parent company, 1105 Media, has bought Post Newsweek Tech Media, which owns Government Computer News, Washington Technology and their other publications and properties including the FOSE trade show. (It is so strange linking to them -- I don't do that very often.)

Here is our story from yesterday... and the WP did a story this morning... and here is what some industry publications are saying.

I'll go into my take on the whole thing later today or tomorrow. Suffice it to say, we are not going to do away with GCN, WT or any of the publications. (I spent some time on the phone with Post Newsweek staff members telling them that. I'm not sure they believe me, but...)

Two interesting items from the WP story.

First is this graph:

"Unfortunately, we could never seem to make the business work," said John B. Morse, The Post Co.'s chief financial officer. All of The Post Co.'s other media assets are consumer-oriented.

The company acquired the magazines in the 1990s at the height of the Internet boom in a bid to aggregate readership and advertising dollars in the Washington technology community. Although the magazines performed relatively well, Morse said, they were not growing and recently have experienced advertising slumps. The company wrote down their value by $9.9 million in its most recent earnings report.

Now Federal Computer Weekly will be paired with Government Computer News at another company.