Once upon a time, real people sat at the desks of wire services like Reuters and Bloomberg, and decided which press releases merited being sent out over the wire. Today this process is increasingly being given over to computers, which use keywords to analyze public companies’ information that has been publicly released. They then shoot them out quickly to the financial world. So it should come as no surprise that the readers on the other end of the Reuters and Bloomberg wires are also, alas, increasingly computers. 

Death by Data: An Extreme Focus on Quantitative Measurement Is Killing CMOs' Sense of Innovation

(Originally published in Ad Age, June 18, 2007)
The malaise plaguing chief marketing officers has been well documented, with the average tenure of a CMO now lasting only 26 months, according to the latest research from Spencer Stuart. High CMO turnover may be due, in part, to the fact that over the past few years, the balance between the art and science of marketing has tilted much too heavily toward quantitative metrics and away from its historical position as a qualitative, creative practice.

With the explosion of news sources over the past two decades, you might think Americans would have greater knowledge about national and international affairs. Not so, says the Pew Research Center, which asked a representative sample of adults a series of nine questions about public figures and news events, which were either identical or comparable to questions asked in surveys conducted in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Most Americans believe that bad news is good for ratings, according to a survey conducted by market researcher, Synovate for Gimundo, in April. Almost twice as many surveyed believe that it is simply the nature of media to cover bad news over good.