AScribe
In The News

Service Helps Nonprofits Connect With Newspapers

AScribe Delivers News For Colleges, Foundations

By Carl Sullivan

NEW YORK -- While corporate America spends millions to reach journalists, most universities and nonprofits have limited PR budgets and perhaps a harder time getting their stories into newspapers. But a small Internet news wire called AScribe distributes press releases electronically for universities, foundations, and other nonprofit groups -- just like PR Newswire and BusinessWire do for the corporate world.

The for-profit company was founded in 1997 by former San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News business scribe Ron Wolf and David Irons, a former spokesman for the University of California at Berkeley business school -- with help from the UC Berkeley Incubator. The two men saw that educational institutions had difficulty getting their stories out to the media.

"Many of our clients did not have access to the newsroom in the past," said CEO Victor d'Allant, pointing to the high prices of the big press release distribution services. AScribe charges $125 for an annual membership and then sells packages of press releases with discounts for volume (5 releases for $425 or 100 for $5,000, for example).

The service has about 570 subscribers right now, but d'Allant hopes to double the client list by next summer by targeting associations, public policy groups, and arts organizations. The majority of AScribe's current clients are colleges and universities.

News organizations can receive AScribe's wire service, which distributes an average of 50 releases per day, for free. About 70 newspapers, including USA Today, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post, currently receive AScribe. The service also distributes releases via the Associated Press, LexisNexis, and Screaming Media, an online syndication company.

For editors, AScribe can help deliver a diversity of news sources, said David DeCosse, newsroom manager. "Many newspapers require their reporters to get a diverse group of voices into their stories, and our service helps deliver news and experts that may have been ignored previously," DeCosse said.

AScribe offers free filtered e-mail feeds for reporters, delivering press releases on particular topics, such as the environment or medicine. The company will also establish customized feeds for newsrooms.

D'Allant reports the 7-employee company is on track to have a profitable fiscal year. With about two dozen investors, privately held AScribe has raised $1.5 million since its inception. "We met with some venture capitalists a few years ago and they wouldn't invest in us because we weren't big enough," d'Allant remembered. Instead they threw cash at Webvan, the now dead dot-com grocer. "We're small, but we're also survivors," he said.