PR Newswire is a distributor of

press release A press release is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public release. Press releases are also considere ...

s headquartered in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. The service was created in 1954 to allow companies to electronically send press releases to news organizations, using

teleprinter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...

s at first. The founder, Herbert Muschel, operated the service from his house in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

for approximately 15 years. The business was eventually sold to

Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company chang ...

and then

United Newspapers UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its pr ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. In December 2015, Cision Inc. announced it would acquire the company. On January 1, 2021, Cision formally merged PR Newswire into the company, ending its status as a legal entity after 66 years. Cision plans to continue utilizing the brand name for the foreseeable future in the United States, as well as in Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions.

History

PR Newswire was founded in March 1954 by Herbert Muschel, who ran the business from his town house in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

for the first 15 years of its operation. The company used

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

s lines and

s owned by

to distribute content to a dozen news organizations in New York. Its first customer was

Trans World Airlines Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline which operated from 1930 until 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with F ...

. In 1963, Muschel recruited David Steinberg of the

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

to take a management position with the company after the

1962–1963 New York City newspaper strike The 1962–1963 New York City Newspaper Strike was a strike action within the Media in New York City#Newspapers, newspaper industry of New York City which ran from December 8, 1962, until March 31, 1963, lasting for a total of 114 days. Besides l ...

. Muschel had been impressed by Steinberg's use of the service to report financial news during the strike without using reporters. Muschel sold 81% of the company to

in 1970 for over 60 thousand shares of

letter stock Tracking stock, also known as letter stock and targeted stock, is a specialized equity offering issued by a company that is based on the operations of a defined business within the larger organization (such as, for instance, a wholly owned subsid ...

, with Muschel and Steinberg continuing to manage the company after the acquisition. Steingberg served as vice president and chief of operations, and became president of the company in 1976. In 1977, PR Newswire began using electronic terminals for

copy editing Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material ( copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that text is free of grammatical and factual errors. ''The Chicago Manual o ...

. By 1978, PR Newswire distributed content to approximately 250 news points and financial institutions in 75 cities using 12,000 miles of private transmission lines. In addition to its New York headquarters, the service also sent content from offices in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, and

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

at a rate of 150 words per minute. In 1982, the company was sold to

of London for $9.5 million. PR Newswire acquired Mediawire in 1983, expanding the company's reach into over 125 newsrooms in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

, and

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

. The company acquired Intermedia Group in 1985, incorporating its regional news wires in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, and

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. At the time of the company’s full absorption by Cision in 2021, the number of offices had been reduced to two: Cleveland, OH and Albuquerque, NM. Both offices remain open under Cision as of 2022. ABC-TV and Indesys partnered with PR Newswire in 1989 to provide news feeds to television and entertainment editors and writers in the U.S. and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Program changes, production schedules, and news from entertainment sources were transmitted over a satellite distribution network and an FM

subcarrier A subcarrier is a sideband of a radio frequency carrier wave, which is modulated to send additional information. Examples include the provision of colour in a black and white television system or the provision of stereo in a monophonic radio broa ...

. Steinberg retired in 1992, but continued as vice chairman until 2002. During his tenure, the service became a state-of-the-art communications network with 700 employees. In 2000 the company acquired eWatch, founded in 1995 as an automated service to monitor

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

chat room The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

groups, web publications, online service forums and investor

message boards An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

for mentions of a specific organization, issue, product or service. In 2001, PR Newswire issued a multimedia news release for

Touchstone Pictures Touchstone Pictures, Inc. was an American film production label of Walt Disney Studios, founded and owned by The Walt Disney Company. Feature films released under the Touchstone label were produced and financed by Walt Disney Studios, and featu ...

promoting the film ''

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...

'', which included

b-roll In film and television production, B-roll, B roll, B-reel or B reel is supplemental or alternative footage intercut with the main shot. The term ''A-roll'', referring to main footage, has fallen out of use. Film and video production Films and ...

, soundbites, high resolution images, and

film trailer A trailer (also known as a preview, coming attraction or attraction video) is a commercial advertisement, originally for a feature film that is going to be exhibited in the future at a movie theater/cinema. It is a product of creative and tech ...

. On April 17, 2007, PR Newswire acquired Vintage Filings. In December 2008, PR Newswire moved its

corporate headquarters from

Midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

, at 350 Hudson Street. In mid-2009, PR Newswire acquired The Fuel Team. The largest competitor to PR Newswire is

Business Wire Business Wire is an American company that disseminates full-text press releases from thousands of companies and organizations worldwide to news media, financial markets, disclosure systems, investors, information web sites, databases, bloggers, s ...

, as of 2014 and PR News Journal as of 2018. On December 15, 2015, PR Newswire was sold to global media intelligence company, Cision, for $841 million. The transaction, which required approval by the shareholders of UBM plc as well as regulatory approvals, was expected to close late in the first quarter of 2016. As of June 2016 (closing date of the deal) it became a subsidiary of Cision. As of 2013, the PR newswire database included 10,700

syndicate A syndicate is a self-organizing group of individuals, companies, corporations or entities formed to transact some specific business, to pursue or promote a shared interest. Etymology The word ''syndicate'' comes from the French language, Frenc ...

s and had 800,000

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

s and

influencers An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer, social media personality, internet personality, or simply influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social m ...

in its network. In the 2010s, PR Newswire and its competitor Business Wire were the target of extensive successful attacks by Ukrainian hackers, who accessed not yet published press releases to enable

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...

. According to the FBI, the case was the world's largest known computer hacking and securities fraud, with profits exceeding $100 million in those trades that were made public by the SEC alone, but believed to be vastly higher than that by the authorities. In 2021, there are unconfirmed reports that parent company Cision are looking to spin off PR Newswire driven by Cision-majority owner Platinum Equity. This ultimately did not come to pass.

ProfNet

ProfNet is an online community of communications professionals made to provide reporters access to expert sources and a subsidiary of PR Newswire. ProfNet was founded in 1992 by Dan Forbush, then an administrator at

SUNY Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system' ...

. The original pilot program operated on

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

. After the university changed administrations in 1994, Forbush was unable to convince them to continue running the service. Forbush privatized ProfNet in 1995 and sold it to PR Newswire in March 1996. As a commercial service, ProfNet began charging institutions to participate. By the end of the following year, the distribution list included 2,800 contacts, mostly affiliated with colleges and universities. Other contacts worked at industrial laboratories like

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

and societies like the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

. Many contacts were spokespeople for their institutions, rather than subject-matter experts themselves.

References

External links

*
ProfNet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pr Newswire Press release agencies Mass media companies established in 1954 Mass media companies disestablished in 2021 1954 establishments in New York City 2021 disestablishments in New York (state) Business services companies established in 1954 Business services companies disestablished in 2021 News agencies based in the United States 1971 mergers and acquisitions 1982 mergers and acquisitions 2016 mergers and acquisitions

History

ProfNet

See also

References

External links