January 13, 2009 08:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time 

Business Wire Teams with NAPS to Offer Premier Feature News Distribution Service

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Business Wire announced today that it has partnered with the leader in the distribution of mat releases, North American Precis Syndicate (NAPS), to further enhance its industry-leading feature wire service.

“We’re confident that Business Wire’s superior distribution capabilities combined with our history of feature release placement will prove to be an excellent match,” said Dorothy York, President of NAPS. “It is our goal to provide unparalleled feature news distribution, and this partnership will help us achieve that goal.”

The partnership combines a broad online distribution with the guaranteed results of a mat release service. Business Wire and NAPS will send lifestyle news to more than 11,000 media outlets, including trades, search engines, RSS feeds and other online portals. Additionally, clients will receive a minimum of 100 guaranteed placements for their feature article.

The increasing demand for evergreen features written in a special editorial format along with the most technologically innovative news delivery system will allow clients from public relations firms to non-profit organizations to promote their news effectively and get placed immediately.

“Mat releases are an effective communication tool that has proven to work in the feature industry because it guarantees coverage,” said Angela Mendola, Manager of Strategic Products at Business Wire. “It is a method that has been around for decades.”

North American Precis Syndicate has been the leader of mat release services for more than 50 years. A mat release provides newspapers with camera-ready artwork -- both in print and digitally -- with features that are already typeset.

“Our partnership with NAPS offers the largest feature distribution in the market because it allows clients to target the top community newspapers and NAPS will guarantee them a minimum of 100 placements for each feature article,” noted Mendola.

For more information about Business Wire’s Feature News Services, visit http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/features.

About Business Wire

Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is utilized by thousands of member companies and organizations to transmit their full-text news releases, regulatory filings, photos and other multimedia content to journalists, news media, trade publications, institutional and individual investors, financial information services, regulatory authorities, Internet portals, information web sites, business-to-business decision-makers and consumers worldwide. With a news distribution network spanning 150 countries and 45 languages, Business Wire's multi-channel delivery network has access to dozens of international and national news agency networks throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The Business Wire news network is powered by its patented NX high-speed data platform and supports XML, XHTML and XBRL code to deliver the most sophisticated news file to enhance news release interactivity, customization and search engine optimization. Business Wire has 30 bureaus in cities including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Toronto and Sydney with reciprocal offices throughout the world. Business Wire was founded in 1961.

About North American Precis Syndicate (NAPS)

NAPS, or North American Precis Syndicate, provides an easy, cost-effective method of getting a story out to nearly every newspaper in the country. Instead of just covering the same 500 newspapers everyone else is trying to get into, clients can give their top story to practically all of America’s editors in a camera-ready format with art that they can easily reproduce as is. NAPS covers more than 10,000 newspapers in America with more than 225 million in cumulative circulation, about 167 million of which are in the weekly community newspapers and other nondaily newspapers. The company also covers thousands of online publications, offering clients the potential to reach a greater portion of the 300 million people living in the U.S. NAPS has offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta.