Top Stories for the Week of October 5-9, 2009

Here's something to try hard to believe while clapping your hands and tapping your heels together: the recession is over! "Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the opening moments of a New York City press conference to reinforce a message," reports All Things D. "The worst is over, things are looking up, and Google is spending accordingly." Yep, Google recently began hiring again and is looking for companies to buy, reports Bits Blog. Sort of. PaidContent clarifies that Google's "acquisitions will likely be small--involving 'startups with 5, 10 people'." And even though GOOG execs Schmidt and Sergei Brin were in NYC "to spread the word and count their gold bars," says Gawker, "national unemployment stands at 9.8 percent, and Alan Greenspan predicts the economy will just get worse and then stagnate for a good long while. But he cited absolutely zero Google statistics for his prediction, nor does he get free food and laundry and transportation and snacks." Also, in case you were worried Google is amassing vast power and will marshal the forces of Satan, Schmidt assured everyone "We have not yet found the evil room on our campus," according to TechCrunch. Phew. Whereupon Wall Street insiders offered to show Google their own evil rooms (heh, a joke).

Here are more stats to be jazzed about: JP Morgan (a Wall Street firm, so you know it's true) says optimism is back in online ad spending. According to Business Insider: "Morgan surveyed 20 media buyers and planners with about $1.6 billion in annual ad spending...and discovered most of them are ready to spend way more money than they were a year ago." ("Way" is a big number.) There's no such optimism on the print side, where sagging Condé Nast has closed down four established glossies, including Gourmet and Cookie. Cookie's crumbling is a surprise because it supposedly was doing well, says Mediaite. "So is this the end of the bad news? Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend's memo doesn't make it clear...Looks to be a long October at 4 Times Sq." Other stats indicate further upside for online media and more trips to the Cookie jar for print. Infectious Greed cites a new Citi report (so you know it's accurate) that has people spending 21 percent of their time online. What?! That can't be possibly right. But if it is, says Infectious, "advertisers underallocate badly to online based on time spent with the media...Assuming [the numbers] are even in the ballpark, advertisers have some 'splainin' to do."

Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize-winning and widely attacked liberal economist Paul Krugman tries to splain some things at his blog Conscience of a Liberal, like why credit markets are screwed up. This week he took his show on the road and was "depressing the hell out of the folks over at the World Business Forum," according to WSJ @ World Business Forum. El Kruggo told 'em based on U.S. production "the recession is over, we're back to a world of growth" but the jobs picture remains nauseating, and in trade, "it's not the Great Depression, it's worse." Sigh. At least there's quiet growth in the construction of corporate evil rooms.

And for comic relief, we present funnyman David Letterman. Broadsheet wondered early in the week why feminists weren't madder at him for his notorious office affairs. Turns out they are. The National Organization for Women issued a statement condemning Letterman to the evil room. "Workplaces plagued with inappropriate behavior by men in power? We thought that was the definition of a job," says Tennessee Guerilla Woman, which has NOW's statement. Still, "sex, blackmail and jokes" are the formula for beating Leno, says PopEater, noting a Late Show ratings surge. Adds Media Decoder: "It may not be the best long-term strategy to build ratings success on a sex scandal, but it is certainly putting distance between Mr. Letterman and his main late-night competitor, Conan O'Brien."

Thank goodness there are still things that make us say "happy," "yay" and "awesome." Those are keywords that contribute to Facebook's new Gross National Happiness index, which quantifies happy words versus sad words (such as "sad") in users' status updates, to take the temperature of the nation's mood (well, at least for the 21 percent of our lives that we spend online). It's "basic sentiment analysis," says DigitalBeat. Some "not-too-surprising findings": the index "spikes on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Barack Obama's election was more than twice as happy as the average Wednesday." A down day was January 22, 2008, when the Asian stock market took a dive and Heath Ledger was found dead. "Sound creepy?," The Social asks. "Facebook doesn't think so. To protect your privacy, no one at Facebook actually reads the status updates." So it's kind of just like real life. Yay.

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