Ad Shift Throws Blogs a Business Lifeline

A look at blog networks. Such networks put blogs on various topics under some form of central control, like a digital-era Condé Nast. Though they do not command nearly the same ad rates that glossy magazines do, they are attracting ad dollars while magazines are losing them. The blog networks that have survived the downturn in advertising and the explosion of competing content on the Web credit their obsessive coverage of narrow topics, along with business models that reach beyond advertising.