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News & Comment

Lois Paul is retiring. The cofounder of Lois Paul and Partners and a respected technology journalist before that, she has been an inspiration to many people, including our co-hosts. Her work ethic, integrity and judgment are legendary in the New England PR industry and elsewhere. We expect that in retirement, Lois might cut her work week back to 35 hours. Whatever she does with her time, she will do it well.

A long post on the Curata blog asserts that “Content Marketers Desperately Need More Journalists.” It cites recent Curata research that shows that companies continue to invest heavily in content marketing but struggle to find quality content. The post goes on to argue that journalists are the perfect therapy for this pain. They aren’t afraid to ask questions, they see the big picture and they know how to tell stories and write engaging headlines. At a time when the challenge of rising above the noise is greater than ever, why would you not want to hire people who already know how to do it?

China is cracking down on news sites that use social media as sources, saying that tweets aren’t a substitute for good old-fashioned fact-checking. We wish more U.S. news organizations would take a cue from Beijing; we see too many tweets used in lieu of quotes obtained from first-person interviews. A 140-character message has no context, yet TV news organizations, in particular, are in love with them.

New research by Forrester finds that CMOs are feeling their oats. More than eight in 10 report that their performance is now lined with business targets and nearly 1/3 have P&L responsibility, which is way up from last year. Equally significant, CMOs are increasingly taking on responsibility for customer experience, which IBM’s 2015 C-Suite Study found is the number one priority of top executives.

About Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin, host of FIR B2B, is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. Full bio

About David Strom

David Strom is a former editor-in-chief of Network Computing and Tom's Hardware who has written two computer networking books and thousands of articles about B2B IT.