Corporate media supplants independent journalism in semiconductor market
Corporate websites in the semiconductor industry provide the information that customers trust and go to, over the sites that identify themselves as “independent journalism.” As I wrapped up the old year, a trend I’ve been watching since 2000 finally came to a conclusion: Media as we have defined it for the past 50 years is dead in the semiconductor industry. It has been replaced by Corporations as Media. Some may think the beginning of this trend was when Paul Miller, then CEO of UBM Tech, announced to the EDAC member meeting that EE Times was dropping coverage of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. It really began in 2000 when the three large EDA companies — Synopsys , Mentor Graphics and Cadence — began slashing their advertising budgets with the express design to reduce the number of print pages in the robust media industry. The plan was to limit the amount of “free PR” smaller companies were getting thanks to the advertising dollars from t...