We've Got Algorithms. Who Needs Editors?

In an article published last weekend on Mashable, Sarah Kessler asked the question, “Can Robots Run the News?” It’s an important question not just for journalists, but for anyone who creates or curates content on the Web.

The examples Kessler cites span the range of content creation, from automatically generated sports news to the use of [...]

Journalists as Buzzword Killers

A post today from Josh Gordon on words to avoid in content marketing gets to the heart of what content marketers must do: think like journalists.

In his post,  he reports on an effort by PR strategist Adam Sherk to enumerate the frequency of 98 marketing buzzwords in current press releases.  As Sherk acknowledges, he [...]

Content's Evil Twin: Advertorial

This morning, the Los Angeles Times passed yet another milestone on the road to ruin of what was once a great newspaper. When I opened it to section two (the awkwardly named “LATEXTRA”), I experienced the following sequence of thoughts:

Wow, Universal Studios burned down yesterday.
Hold on, it says “ADVERTISEMENT” above the photo.
Oh, this whole thing [...]

Wine, Roses, and Oil: PR and the Truth

Last night I happened to watch  Days of Wine and Roses, a Jack Lemmon-Lee Remick movie from 1962 that, perhaps because of the overexposed theme song, I had resisted for years.

My mistake.  It is a powerful, compelling story of an alcoholic couple whose refusal to acknowledge their alcoholism destroys their relationship. For a movie made [...]

Ethics: Transparency Is Not All

In a comment today on a recent B2B Memes blog post, “Content Marketing’s PR Problem,”  a reader by the dubious name of Ant Miles raises an interesting point about content marketing and journalism. As Miles notes, journalism is often biased in hidden ways by PR and marketing. In content marketing, that bias tends to be [...]

The Great Ghost-Blogging Debate

As he does so often and so well, Mark Schaeffer has sparked yet another fascinating debate on his blog today. Reviving a topic addressed last March by Jon Buscall and Mitch Joel, he argues against their position that CEOs should not use ghost writers for their blogs. While Schaeffer agrees with them in theory, in [...]

The Coming Content Marketing-Publishing Continuum

Writing on Foliomag.com earlier this month, blogger Josh Gordon spun a comment heard at the Folio: show into a bullish prediction for print magazines. Although the grounds for his optimism might be questioned, I’ll leave that to prophet of print doom Private Frazer and others. What interested me most in Gordon’s premise was a point [...]