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.