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Online
News Service Helps Charities
By
NICOLE WALLACE
AScribe,
a news wire dedicated to distributing press releases from non-profit
organizations, hopes to help charities reach both traditional and
online news organizations. More than 50 daily and weekly publications,
such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Business Week, and
more than 150 Web sites, such as MSNBC, OnHealth, and Boston.com,
have signed up to receive information from AScribe.
A one-year
membership to distribute news through AScribe costs $90. Members
send releases free for the first three months of their memberships.
After that, they select one of three subscription packages, in which
the price per release varies between $12.50 and $17.50, depending
on the number of releases they plan to send.
AScribe
got its start in March 1998 as a way for universities and colleges
in California to distribute their news to state and local newspapers.
Since
then the news organization has expanded its service nationally and
opened membership to all types of non-profit organizations. Currently,
the service«s members number more than 275 organizations in 30 states.
The
Oakland, Calif., company was founded by Ron Wolf, a former reporter
at the San Jose Mercury News and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and
David Irons, who spent more than a decade as public-affairs director
at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
"We
just saw a huge need for a service that took advantage of all the
technology that is currently available to distribute the news of
this still neglected and extraordinarily newsworthy part of the
American economy," says Mr. Irons. To get there: Go to
http://www.ascribe.org.
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