Two pieces of interesting, semi-complementary news from BusinessWeek: blogs are up, and ad pages are down. First, blogs: they've launched another one to their already impressive roster -- the "Working Parents" blog, which add to existing blogs like Auto Beat, Blogspotting, and Fine on Media for a total of twelve. Yes. Twelve.

In print, however, they've posted an 18.8% decline in ad pages for the fourth quarter and a 12.8% decline for the year. (Former BW staffer Gary Weiss posted same to his blog, bemoaning the not-unrelated decline in investigative reporting; in a meta-move, BW's "Blogspotting" blog picked it up).

BW is not alone in this trend, obviously, but it's interesting to see them embrace a new medium and really push their online voice; according to BW Online spokesperson Craig Sender, the blog network has helped push BusinessWeek Online to 35.7 million page views in December alone, according to Nielsen - a record. And its online progress has been noted; BW Online was named a finalist in the blog category for the MIN "Best of the Web" awards, along with Slate, WaPo, and Newsweek. To paraphrase Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, when the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window (or, in BusinessWeek's case, twelve windows).

(Peruse the finalists here; nice work on the multiple noms Slate and Newsweek, and congrats to Giant on the redesign nod.)

BusinessWeek's got a brand-new blog (to match its bloggoriffic cover story) [FBNY]
Blogs Will Change Your Business [BusinessWeek]