Shakeout coming among tech news sites?

Steven Perlberg of The Wall Street Journal examines the future of tech news sites in the wake of the closing of GigaOm.

Perlberg writes, “Gigaom’s fate had others in the digital media industry wondering if the event portended a larger ‘content shakeout,’ especially given that Say Media recently sold its own tech site ReadWrite.

“Executives in the media and venture capital worlds say it is quite difficult to be a self-sustaining site these days, considering the crowded tech media space.

“‘When everybody from The Wall Street Journal to the New York Times to everybody else has doubled down on covering tech, what’s your value?’ said Rafat Ali, the CEO and founder of travel site Skift. Mr. Ali sat on an advisory board to Gigaom after the site he founded, paidContent, was acquired by the company (though he says they never asked him for advice).

“Mr. Ali said that Gigaom likely raised too much money for a company that was unlikely to drive the kind of audience hyper-growth of a BuzzFeed or Vox Media.

“The site has long done a good job covering specialized areas, from clean tech to enterprise businesses, but getting a large audience and keeping up with the competition proved difficult.”

Read more here.