AScribe
In The News

A Press Release Wire for Non-profits

by Steve Outing

For non-profit groups, educational institutions, or research organizations that generate lots of news, sending press releases via the major press release wires (like PR Newswire or BusinessWire) can be prohibitively expensive. An interesting initiative designed to help the educational and non-profit world get the word out as comprehensively as do those services is Ascribe.org, a press release wire that's designed to reach journalists in the same way as the major PR wires. CEO Ron Wolf, a former San Jose Mercury News technology journalist, says after much time building the service and "staying under radar," he's ready to start publicizing Ascribe.org's service.

There's a $90 annual membership fee, then "dirt cheap" rates for sending each release. Wolf says that many universities have hundreds of press releases they issue each year, but because of the cost of using the business wires, they often just use fax and e-mail lists to send out their news to journalists. Using Ascribe to pump their press releases into newsroom computer systems puts the education and non-profit sector on a par with businesses that can afford to use the business wires, he says.