Mick Weinstein The Week's Best Stock Blogs

As we moved full throttle into first quarter earnings this week, the overriding questions were how much bad news has already been priced into this market, and just how bad that news would actually turn out to be. You've already read the cold, press-release-based earnings writeups, so here's some informed opinion and analysis from econobloggers on reports from a few big tech and media names. As always, click through for the full post of any item that piques your interest:

Google on April 16 reported earnings of $5.16 a share ($1.88 billion), well ahead of Wall Street estimates of $4.93 a share.

• Trader Mark: "It is sort of sad to see that even Google has reached the point where cutting jobs is the way to make 'the number'...for the first time in history it had a sequential drop in sales."

• Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital sees that just the opposite way: "What GOOG shareholders should be thankful for is the hatchet the company took to expenses and cost rationalization."

• Dan Rayburn, online video expert: "Google says YouTube won't lose $500 million this year. I say, prove it."

• Henry Blodget: "This quarter's cash flow equates to an $8 billion free-cash run-rate. That means the stock is trading at 13X run-rate free cash flow (enterprise value). That's not screamingly cheap for a company this size, but it's no highway robbery, either."

• Jay Yarow puts Google's massive cash flow production in context with other major U.S. corporations.

Apple on April 22 reported earnings of $1.33 a share ($1.21 billion), handily beating estimates of $1.09 a share.

• Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 selects five key quotes from Apple's post-earnings conference call with analysts. DeWitt also has a nice breakdown of how well Apple analysts predicted Apple's results overall and by product line.

• John Timmer calls it a "pretty impressive quarter...[Apple has] managed to keep sales of two of its product lines, the Mac and iPods, steady, while boosting its bottom line through iPhone sales. There are a lot of other companies that would be happy to see those sorts of results."

• Stephen Rosenman, an Apple shareholder, says the company's non-GAAP earnings tell the real story: "Desktops and notebooks didn't blow away the numbers. It was the iPhones that did with a 302% increase year over year."

• Steve Birenberg of Northlake Capital Management: "The quarter was amazingly routine, especially given the economic headwinds. I see no reason [Apple] stock can't move up toward $150..."

• TechCrunch's MG Siegler probes the state of the iPhone and finds it "strong. Very strong."

• Om Malik explains why AT&T has become "desperately addicted to the iPhone."

The New York Times Company on April 21 reported a loss of $0.34 a share ($61.6 million), far worse than analyst estimates of a $0.06/share loss.

• Erick Schonfeld: "The advertising outlook for newspapers is going from awful to horrendous."

• Tim McLaughlin finds a Barclays analyst making the case that NYT shares are not just devalued in this environment but actually "worth nothing, as the newspaper company's debt load threatens to overwhelm its earnings power."

• Julia Boorstin notes the painful NYT report, but asks if relief for this troubled newspaper sector may be coming from Washington.

• Jon Friedman says it's a matter of time until the company is sold, and he believes "The Times continues to feel the effects of a mistimed acquisition of the Boston Globe and the questionable takeover of About.com."

Amazon on April 23 reported earnings of $0.23 a share ($244 million), $0.10 a share better than analyst estimates.

• Sam Diaz: "Amazon may be taking a lesson from Apple when it comes to earnings. Forecast low, come in high and keep everyone on Wall Street smiling."

• Rory Maher at Paidcontent.org finds that "Worldwide media sales grew 7 percent to $2.72 billion, indicating the company continues to differentiate beyond books."

• WSJ's Andrew LaVallee selects some key quotes from Amazon's conference call with analysts.

• Stephen Frankola: "Amazon.com is a great company that trades at a somewhat ridiculous valuation."

And finally: When is a transcript of an earnings call not really a transcript? When the transcriber feels it's more important to protect readers from bad words than it is to fully transcribe what occurred.