AScribe
In The News

Free the Media

While many companies slow their PR, sales, and marketing efforts, AScribe
is changing how nonprofit, academic, and government organizations leverage
the power of PR.

AScribe is a public-interest newswire that operates out of the first floor
of a small house on College Avenue. Almost 4 years old, AScribe got its
start when David Irons and Ron Wolf, the company's cofounders, combined
their university-external-affairs and business-journalism experience to
create a service similar to Business Wire and PR Newswire -- only designed
to meet the PR needs of nonprofits, educational institutions, and
government agencies.

Now with 500 clients and hundreds of newspapers and other media outlets
using its daily stream of 35 stories, AScribe has created a viable
counterpart to the major business newswires -- and positioned itself well
for expansion into other information services. Over a cup of coffee and a
muffin from the cafŽ next door, I talked to David Irons and [then-CEO] Mary
Burczyk about freeing the media for social entrepreneurs and people working
in the public sector, how to reach out best to journalists, and the role
technology plays in AScribe's work.

Open access. "The corporate sector has always had access to the media, but
nonprofits did not. The places the news from the corporate wires goes are
not always the 'news neighborhoods' in which the independent and public
sectors' news should go," says Mary Burczyk. "As information was going
digital, the nonprofit sector didn't have the efficiencies and
effectiveness of a newswire to get its news into the media.

"We aggregated those voices and reached the critical mass to get into the
major databases and newswires. For businesses, the SEC requires companies
to widely disseminate news that might affect share prices. For nonprofits,
there's no legal requirement. The interest is more about getting the news
out. That can be a challenge with traditional services, which charge about
$400 per news release. An annual report release might cost $3,000. We
charge about $50 for a single release."

Reach out and up. "When we started AScribe, we knew that we had to hit
journalists where they sit -- and to create a complement to the other
newswires editors use, such as AP and Reuters," says David Irons. "AScribe
is invited into the newsroom by the managing editor. And we need to fit the
technical requirements of each of the newspapers and magazines we work
with.

Founders David Irons and Ron Wolf call their service "a news wire with a social
conscience" because, unlike the more expensive PRNewswire and Business Wire,
AScribe only distributes public interest news. They say that for non-profits
and public institutions like universities and medical centers, there is an inherent
advantage to having their news flow with other public interest news -- without
the distraction of corporate releases or new product announcements.


However, AScribe will take corporate news as long as it fits the definition
of public interest -- such as scientific discoveries or survey research -- as
well as announcements of new products that rise to the level of vaccines or
cancercures.

"We offer the AScribe newsfeed, but we also offer a specialists' queue for
some papers. When Business Week and Newsweek asked us for a feed, we
created their own AScribe Web pages [on their Intranets]. Our newsroom
staff formats and edits stories they use 160 different category codes, so
editors can find what they need [and also so AScribe can create highly
specilized newsfeeds]."

Don't trip on technology. "We could not have started if the Net revolution
hadn't taken place. Everyone had to have email before AScribe could exist,"
says David. "But we're not a dot-com. We are typical of the
northern-California scene in that we spotted a niche and saw that
technology could help. Expensive content on the Net has been the downfall
of some media online. AScribe has always been somewhat underfunded. But we
never overstaffed and our clients pay their bills. When you work with
organizations like the University of California, your bills get paid on
time."