About Canada NewsWire

Canada NewsWire

Canada NewsWire (CNW) is Canada's leading commercial press-release distribution service, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Founded in 1960 as Canada News Wire by Joseph Adair Porter Clark, it has spent more than six decades moving corporate, government and organizational announcements onto the desks — and now the screens — of Canadian newsrooms. Acquired by the American company PR Newswire in 2013 and now part of Cision, it continues to operate in Canada under the Canada Newswire brand, with its services marketed as "powered by Canada Newswire."

Overview

Canada NewsWire is a newswire in the commercial sense: rather than gathering journalism, it distributes paid announcements — press releases, media advisories, financial disclosures, photos, video and webcasts — from paying clients to journalists and the public. Its clients are the organizations that need to reach Canadian media systematically: publicly traded companies issuing earnings and material-change disclosures, governments announcing policy, non-profits promoting campaigns, and public-relations firms working on their behalf. The releases it carries, datelined and timestamped in the familiar "TORONTO ... /CNW/ -" format, are a staple of Canadian business and political journalism.

The service is offered both stand-alone and as part of Cision's Communications Cloud platform for public-relations professionals. Its distribution network, as described in industry coverage, reaches thousands of media outlets and websites, hundreds of news-content systems, and PR Newswire for Journalists, the media-only community of email subscribers — with targeting across hundreds of industry and trade categories.

History

CNW was founded in 1960 as Canada News Wire by Joseph Adair Porter Clark (1921–2013), who became the news service's CEO and president. Clark was the father of television journalist Tom Clark. The original model was straightforward: deliver text news releases to news media outlets on behalf of paying clients. Over time the model expanded to include the ancillary services required by investor-relations and public-relations professionals — translation, photography, webcasts, media databases and media monitoring — turning the company from a simple distribution utility into a full-service communications partner.

The company's technology evolved with the industry: Canada Newswire's distribution switched from the legacy ANPA-1312 wire format to XHTML, allowing richer formatting of releases. In 2003, CNW entered a commercial endorsement deal with the Toronto Stock Exchange for its newswire and webcast services through a paid sponsorship agreement — a relationship the TSX continued to endorse in subsequent years, with CNW and TSX executives opening the market together in January 2015 to celebrate the arrangement. The company moved early on digital and social distribution: in May 2012 it launched the CNW Mobile app, giving users on the go access to the service's content, and in April 2012 it described itself as the first and only newswire service in Canada to offer Twitter integration, letting readers respond to releases, photos and video. In January 2015 it added a French-language interface to its social-monitoring service, letting users toggle between English and French. Its Media Daybook — a daily listing of live events by region to help newsrooms allocate resources — returned to the Canadian newswire feed and the company's website in March 2015 and became a newsroom staple.

In 2013, CNW Group was acquired by U.S.-based PR Newswire, continuing operations as its Canada Newswire subsidiary. Cision bought PR Newswire — and with it Canada Newswire — for US$841 million in a deal announced in December 2015 and finalized on June 17, 2016, creating what was billed as the world's largest press-release distribution network with more than 100,000 customers in 170 countries. PR Newswire was subsequently merged into Cision in 2021; Cision itself was acquired by Platinum Equity, announced October 22, 2019. In March 2021, Business Insider reported that Cision might look to spin off its newswire unit — and since that year, when PR Newswire was merged into Cision, the company has marketed its press-release services in Canada as "powered by Canada Newswire." Through these changes of ownership, the Toronto-based Canadian operation and the newswire.ca platform have continued uninterrupted.

Content

Canada NewsWire distributes the full range of organizational communications: corporate press releases (earnings, mergers, executive appointments, product launches), government announcements, non-profit campaigns, media advisories and event listings, photography and video including B-roll packages, and webcasts of financial results and events. The releases span the standard news topics — politics and government, business, technology, religion, sports and entertainment, science and nature, health and lifestyle — and are published on newswire.ca in both English and French, reflecting the bilingual requirements of Canadian corporate communications. The CNW Media Daybook provides newsrooms with a daily calendar of live events by region.

The service's ancillary offerings — translation (including French-language interfaces for services such as social monitoring), photography, webcasts, media databases and media monitoring — address the full workflow of investor-relations and public-relations professionals, from drafting and distributing an announcement to measuring its pickup.

The releases follow the familiar Canadian newswire dateline convention — city, date and the /CNW/ slug, as in "TORONTO, May 22, 2012 /CNW/ -" — a format generations of Canadian journalists recognize on sight. The company's newsroom pages on newswire.ca are organized by issuing organization, with dedicated feeds for CNW Group Ltd. and Canada NewsWire Ltd. and pagination stretching back through years of announcements. Complimentary Visibility Reports give clients insight into how their releases performed, and in 2012 the company published an "Effective Crisis Management" content series for communicators navigating the quickening pace of information exchange. Through the Cision network, CNW-distributed releases can also reach international audiences, while the core of the business remains the Canadian media market the company has served since 1960.

Coverage & Audience

Canada NewsWire's distribution is national: its releases reach newsrooms, journalists and news-content systems across Canada, in both official languages, as well as international distribution through the PR Newswire/Cision network. Industry coverage of the service describes a distribution footprint of nearly 3,000 media outlets, more than 4,000 websites and more than 550 news-content systems, with targeting across more than 200 industry and trade categories — alongside PR Newswire for Journalists, the media-only community of email subscribers, and MyCNW, the public news-alert subscription offering. Its direct audience is twofold: the paying clients who use the service to announce news, and the journalists who rely on the wire for story leads, official statements and event listings. The general public encounters CNW-distributed releases through republication on news websites, through the searchable archive at newswire.ca, and through MyCNW alerts.

Ownership

Canada NewsWire was founded as an independent Canadian company in 1960. It was acquired by PR Newswire in 2013, which was acquired by Cision in 2016; Cision was subsequently acquired by Platinum Equity. Since the 2021 merger of PR Newswire into Cision, the Canadian press-release services have been marketed as "powered by Canada Newswire," with CNW Group Ltd. continuing as the operating entity headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

Digital Presence

Newswire.ca is the digital home of Canada NewsWire: a searchable, browsable archive of distributed releases organized by topic — politics and government, business, technology, religion, sports and entertainment, science and nature, health and lifestyle — with company newsrooms (such as the CNW Group Ltd. and Canada NewsWire Ltd. release pages) and the Media Daybook's daily event listings. The site publishes releases in English and French, offers RSS and email-alert subscriptions including MyCNW, and integrates with Cision's Communications Cloud for PR professionals. The CNW Mobile app extends the service to mobile users. For a company whose business is distribution, the website is both the product showcase and the product itself: the public face of more than sixty years of Canadian announcements.