It sounds like there was no vetting of alternative monetization strategies for the website. I say this because it looks like the site is still running direct-to-advertiser deals, when they could open their remnant inventory up to auction systems via an SSP and tie in yield optimization strategies with their sales team.
If the site has high quality traffic and 10MM pv/month they shouldn't be closing the doors. Based on a 5 minute look at the website and some of the ads seems like the site is restricting its ad revenue to software industry vendors when they could open it up to the rest of the advertising world that wants to pay to serve an in-view ad to a real person with a software engineer's salary.
I've never heard of UBM, but the article portrays it as a company with a vertically focused print and tradeshow revenue model that has a few web properties.
The 1996 website monetization model has been disrupted within the last 5 years with ad exchanges that hold auctions in real-time, and most companies with roots in print don't have a clue whats happening in their industry - see new york times, time magazine, plenty more whose traditional ad sales revenues are plummeting
IMO a web property would fail to adapt to the modern revenue model because 1) C level execs don't know what to change it to, 2) they don't understand the new model, or 3) they think that auction based CPMs will be too low so they haven't tested it. In the case of DrDobbs.com with solid traffic and a high quality, established b2b audience, not sure it makes sense to fold the property.
Disclaimer: I used to work at an ad agency and I now work at a data company for ad exchanges.
Edit: here is a 3rd party source on growth in the RTB channel, to which UBM has no exposure:
www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Programmatic-Ad-Spend-Tops-10-Billion-This-Year-Double-by-2016/1011312
It seems to me like this article is a concession towards the fact that they haven't thought of anything. They are already profitable. That means that they have money to experiment with additional monetization strategies that would NOT involve simply closing.
If the site has high quality traffic and 10MM pv/month they shouldn't be closing the doors. Based on a 5 minute look at the website and some of the ads seems like the site is restricting its ad revenue to software industry vendors when they could open it up to the rest of the advertising world that wants to pay to serve an in-view ad to a real person with a software engineer's salary.