PR Newswire

PR Newswire was founded in New York in 1954 by Herbert Muschel, the originator of TV Guide, to deliver news releases from public relations and investor relations practitioners to the news media. On March 8, 1954, it transmitted the first electronic commercial news release simultaneously to 12 media outlets in New York over a private teleprinter network; clients submitted a single copy of a release and paid a flat fee of $15 per day. Before this, news releases had to be delivered to each newspaper or periodical individually.⁠[1][1][2][1][1][1]

During a general newspaper strike in New York City in the 1960s, PR Newswire expanded its teleprinter circuit to newspapers in Philadelphia, Washington, and Pittsburgh.⁠[1]

In 1971, PR Newswire was acquired by Western Union Corporation and for the next ten years operated as its wholly owned subsidiary, expanding its distribution to the investment community across the United States.⁠[1][1]

In 1982, United News & Media Group plc of London acquired PR Newswire, which became its wholly owned subsidiary. From the mid-1980s, the company acquired local wire services and opened more bureaus across the United States, and by the end of the 1980s it had 17 bureaus and about 15,000 clients.⁠[1][1][1][1]

In 1997, PR Newswire acquired the two largest remaining local news release wire services in the United States at the time, Southwest Newswire in Dallas and Public Relations News Service in Chicago, completing its national distribution network and gaining direct reach to 22,000 media outlets. Between 1996 and 2000, it successively acquired ProfNet, which connects journalists with experts; NEWSdesk International; Two-Ten Communications, the largest distributor of corporate news in the United Kingdom (for $27.2 million); and the online monitoring service eWatch, expanding its business into Europe and online monitoring.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

On March 8, 2004, PR Newswire marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first news release and announced a $25,000 donation to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The historical innovations the company cited included establishing the first transcontinental and transatlantic news release dissemination network, and the acceptance of newswires as a disclosure vehicle by the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Nasdaq Stock Market.⁠[2][2]

On December 15, 2015, parent company UBM announced that it would sell PR Newswire for $841 million to Cision, a public relations software company controlled by GTCR Canyon Holdings, consisting of $810 million in cash and $31 million in preferred equity, in order to focus on its events business. PR Newswire had revenue of £195.8 million in 2014, about 26% of UBM’s total revenue; at the time it connected more than 30,000 customers, and its CEO was Robert Gray.⁠[3][3][3][3][4][4]

On June 16, 2016, Cision completed its acquisition of PR Newswire Association. Because of a requirement from the U.S. Department of Justice, the deal effectively excluded Agility, a media database owned by PR Newswire, and UBM’s proceeds therefore fell from an expected £498 million to £490 million. At the time, PR Newswire had annual revenue of about $315 million.⁠[5][5][5][5]

On January 31, 2020, PR Newswire’s parent company, Cision Ltd., was acquired by an affiliate of the private investment firm Platinum Equity in an all-cash transaction valued at about $2.7 billion; that day its shares ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange and it became a privately held company.⁠[6][6][6]

PR Newswire served as a community partner of the SuperAI artificial intelligence conference in Singapore in 2024, and in 2026 as a community partner of the Singapore edition of the crypto industry conference TOKEN2049TOKEN2049TOKEN2049 is a global series of cryptocurrency and Web3 industry conferences that originated in Hong Kong; as of October 2026 it centers on its Singapore and Dubai editions and has announced a New York edition to be added in June 2027. The Singapore edition is held at Marina Bay Sands, coinciding with the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.Open the full entry; TOKEN2049’s news releases are also distributed through PR Newswire.⁠[7][8][9][9]

As of October 2026, the copyright holder of the PR Newswire website was Cision US Inc.; PR Newswire promotes itself as having more than 70 years of history and a distribution network reaching more than 500,000 media outlets, newsrooms, and influencers.⁠[10][10][10]

PR Newswire: Official website: https://www.prnewswire.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/PRNewswire (opens in a new window)⁠[10][11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pr-newswire/ (opens in a new window)⁠[10]