Week in Review

Short reads on a Saturday morning:

• Reed Construction Data has thrown more charges at arch rival McGraw-Hill.  Earlier this year Reed closed most of its regional construction magazines.

• Google made three rather significant announcements during the past week or so that may have an effect on publishers in the New Media space.

• The sad news of the week was that Editor & Publisher was closing, of course. But the other part of the announcement was that eight of the ten brands that made up the Nielsen group have found a home with e5 Global Media LLC, a new company formed by private equity firm Pluribus Capital Management and financial services company Guggenheim Partners. The Hollywood Reporter's take on their new home was upbeat.

• The New York Times fourth quarter forecast is not exactly good news: Times print advertising is expected to decline 25%, though Internet advertising is expected to grow. I guess the good news is that this is an improvement on the over 31% decline the Times suffered in the third quarter.  The TMS Media report on third quarter media performance is here.

• In a week of downers, I guess the way to end this round-up is to point out the WSJ story on new forecasts for advertising growth in 2010.  ZenithOptimedia is now expecting a blowout year (snark alert) with growth of .9% versus their previous forecast of growth of .5%. Let's start to chill the Champagne.