At some point during my dispute with the State of Maine over my co-authorship of an anonymous website dealing with a certain candidate for governor, it occurred to me that what we think of today as “mass media” is outdated and archaic. In fact, in the timeline of American history, mass media – newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations – is really an aberration and, in context, may prove to be a short-lived one at that.

There are a lot of so-called "SEO experts" out there making a decent living tweaking their clients' websites so they rank higher on search engines. In fact, there are more people calling themselves "SEO experts" than there are actual SEO experts.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the union of two distinctly different souls whose coming together has been all but foretold as fortuitous and inevitable, and whose bond will create a more lasting, relevant and prosperous relationship.

There were a lot of jokes and pokes at CNN Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner. I don’t know if CNN's long-time anchor John King was in the audience, but if he was, it couldn’t have been much fun to hear the President of the United States say, “I admire (CNN’s) commitment to cover all sides of a story, just in case one of them happens to be accurate.”

Whenever I see a newspaper or TV news station bring a “local angle” to a big, national news story, I can’t help remembering National Lampoon’s Sunday Newspaper Parody from many years ago. One of the main headlines on the front page of the Dacron (OH) Republican-Democrat said, “Two Dacron Women Feared Missing in Volcanic Disaster.” Under the headline, in much smaller type, was the article’s sub-head: “Japan destroyed.”

It’s no secret that many politicians and public figures have incredibly thin skin and are unusually sensitive about how they are portrayed in the press. And it’s no secret that most news reporters are equally thin skinned, defensive and generally don’t react well to criticism.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Congress is unlikely to do much of anything about gun control. Common sense measures that are supported by the vast majority of Americans like universal background checks, limits on the number of bullets in a magazine or clip, and a ban on military-style assault rifles are all losing support and are expected to be defeated.

If you watched South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford give his bizarre, teary-eyed public confession back in 2009 in which he confessed to adultery and leaving his family – and his job – to run off to his lover in Argentina, you’d think you were watching a complete mental breakdown and the sorry end to what had been a promising political career.

OK, I’ll admit right upfront, I’m sometimes a slow learner. I’d come across HubSpot on the web a few years ago, and even downloaded several of their eBooks (and got the automatic follow-up calls and emails from the company’s crack sales team). I even read Inbound Marketing, the manifesto by HubSpot’s founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. I was intrigued, but it still didn’t speak to me. I’m in public relations, after all, and HubSpot seemed all about marketing and advertising. They were a software company whose prime directive was helping companies get found on the web using Google, social media and blogs. That’s not what I did, or at least I didn’t think that’s what I did.

Content Marketing is all the rage right now among companies, brands, ad execs and marketers. It's the shiny new toy, predicted to be the hot new thing this year as companies divert more of their ad and marketing dollars to create nifty content that people want to read or view and share.