PR Newswire
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PR Newswire is a company that sends news releases on behalf of organizations to the media, general public and the financial community. The company is headquartered in the U.S. with offices around the world. Its customers include public relations and investor relations practitioners at both the agency and corporate level, as well as numerous non-profits and government agencies. Some marketing and advertising professionals also use PR Newswire since it offers multimedia capabilities to target consumers directly.
PR Newswire started out in 1954 as a vendor hired by companies and agencies to send out text press releases to the media. Since that time PR Newswire has evolved into a company that is hired by corporations, PR firms and NGOs to deliver news and multimedia content to a wide variety of audiences. Recipients include the media, consumers and investors who access the content via the Web, RSS, email, satellite, equities terminals (such as Bloomberg and Reuters), and direct feeds into newsroom editorial systems.
Public corporations in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and other nations, use PR Newswire as a method of reaching the investment and financial news community simultaneously with important news and announcements, thus achieving the standard of "simultaneous disclosure" demanded by financial markets and regulatory agencies.
Headquartered in New York, PR Newswire has offices in 14 countries and sends news to outlets in 135 countries. The company has several brands and services that include ProfNet, eWatch, MEDIAtlas, MultiVu, U.S. Newswire, Vintage Filings, MediaRoom and MediaSense. It also has agreements with global news agencies such as Bloomberg, the Associated Press, Dow Jones, Thomson Financial and Reuters to send information directly to newsrooms worldwide. PR Newswire is a subsidiary of United Business Media plc of London.
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[edit] History
Established in New York in 1954 by Herb Muschel, PR Newswire was the first to create a system for the electronic distribution of news releases. Prior to its establishment, companies issuing press releases to the New York media had to messenger, dictate or mail individual copies of their news releases to the city’s daily newspapers and news services. With PR Newswire, companies could send a single copy of their release to PR Newswire's newsroom, where it would be simultaneously transmitted to the city's major media points.
PR Newswire was later sold to Western Union, which had provided the telecommunications lines and teleprinters that supported the service.
PR Newswire created Investors Research Wire in 1965, which disseminated corporate news releases directly to brokerage firms and financial analysts. In 1967, the company went national with the acquisition of the local Los Angeles wire service.
Although PR Newswire invented its business model, a number of companies sprung up in major U.S. cities during the 1960s and 1970s to compete.
In 1972, PR Newswire began using electronic terminals for copyediting.
In 1978, the company went digital with the adoption of the Associated Press' computerized message handling and transmission system.
In 1982, the company was purchased by United Newspapers plc (today known as United Business Media plc) of London
In 1982, PR Newswire expanded its presence throughout the decade by acquiring companies, beginning with the purchase of Philadelphia-based Mediawire in 1983. By the end of the 1980s, many U.S. dailies and financial institutions took PR Newswire directly into their internal information systems. PR Newswire also began archiving news releases on electronic databases, including NEXIS (now LexisNexis).
In 1996, PR Newswire made released news via Web with the launch of www.prnewswire.com.
In 2002, PR Newswire started MultiVu, its own broadcast and multimedia production company, to create and deliver video/audio news releases, multimedia news releases, satellite and radio media tours, public service announcements, electronic multimedia kits and Web video.
In October 2006, PR Newswire acquired U.S. Newswire from Medialink.
In April 2007, PR Newswire acquired the privately held Vintage Filings company.
In August 2007, PR Newswire acquired Notilog.
In Jan 2008, PR Newswire acquired Hispanimark,LLC and its subsidiaries, Hispanic PR Wire (http://www.hispanicprwire.com), LatinClips (http://www.latinclips.com) and Hispanic Digital Network (http://www.hdnweb.com).
[edit] Distribution
PR Newswire distributes news to reach mainstream outlets, to over 78 categories of industry trade media, more than 4,000 Web sites and PR Newswire for Journalists, a digital media channel serving more than 85,000 registered journalists across the globe. PR Newswire also provides services to public companies to assist in meeting SEC and all the major exchange disclosure requirements, including distribution to key disclosure media.
PR Newswire continues to expand its online distribution channels. As of late 2007, PR Newswire distributed news to over 4,000 Web sites, databases and financial networks - such as Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN, MarketWatch, Factiva, Dow Jones, Bloomberg, Reuters, Thomson Financial, LexisNexis and Comtex. This is in addition to the 4,700 + media points PR Newswire’s national wire circuits reach.
In the social media realm, PR Newswire now includes numerous social bookmarking functionalities on every press release that appears on www.prnewswire.com, as well as every Multimedia News Release MultiVu creates. Examples of this are partnerships with del.icio.us and Technorati to enable news release viewers to share the information and track blog response to the news. PR Newswire also offers more than 688 RSS news feeds, 188 of which are public RSS feeds including geographical as well as industry/subject feeds and makes its RSS available to over 500 journalists in English, German, Spanish and French. In addition, PR Newswire also provides customers with the strategic tools to measure the effectiveness of their media campaigns with products such as eWatch and MediaSense.
[edit] Xinhua PR Newswire
Xinhua PR Newswire (XPRN), an alliance created between Xinhua Finance and PR Newswire, assists companies and organizations in delivering their news releases to the media, individual and institutional investors, the general public worldwide, with clipping, monitoring, measurement and media intelligence services.
Founded in 1954, PR Newswire is the world's oldest and largest corporate news distribution service. PR Newswire has a global client base of 40,000 companies, organizations and government agencies, including over 60% of the Fortune 500 companies.
Utilizing PR Newswire's global news distribution network, Xinhua PR Newswire can send clients' press releases to 24,000 media points in 135 countries in 40 languages, as well as to over 1 million investors worldwide, helping companies generate exposure, build brand awareness and attract potential clients, business partners and investors.
In China they have a network of 9,000 journalists representing 3,000+ media agencies, which include 500 general media, 2,200 trade publications, 300 websites and 50 foreign news media.
Meanwhile, for companies already listed or planning to list on American or other overseas stock exchanges, using Xinhua PR Newswire can help attract international investors and comply with mandatory disclosure requirements. To ensure the broadest possible distribution, every story is simultaneously delivered to the "disclosure" media designated by NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ and LSE, including Dow Jones, Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor's Business Daily and others.
