Canada's most popular news release website undergoes dramatic transformation

Journalists, bloggers and investment professionals invited to preview CNW's new website at wwwbeta.newswire.ca

To view the Social Media Release, click here: http://smr.newswire.ca/en/cnw/canadas-most-popular-news-release-website-undergoes

TORONTO, Aug. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ - CNW (Canada Newswire) introduced a completely redesigned website today that showcases client content and engages online audiences with attractive multimedia display, precise search capabilities, social tools and time-saving features. The new site is now available for preview at wwwbeta.newswire.ca.

"Our clients seek attention for their news, so we designed a new website with our clients' audiences in mind: traditional media, the financial community and bloggers," said Carolyn McGill, CNW President and CEO. "The new site is rich with features that will help professional users get more out of our clients' content and help them do their jobs better."

The CNW website at newswire.ca is the most visited source of news releases, webcasts and multimedia content issued by Canadian organizations. Much of the traffic to the site originates from traditional and online news media and from brokers, analysts and others in Canada's top financial districts. The new newswire.ca website will make it easier for these professional users to find and share news releases and multimedia content, and to explore the site for in-depth information about issuing organizations.

"Increasingly, consumers of news and information are requesting more multimedia content. Our new website design means that every news release can easily become an Enriched News Release with the simple addition of photos, video and social tools," says Ms. McGill. "The transformed CNW website will help communications professionals reach their goals by giving the media, markets and consumers what they have requested. The power of the Enriched News Release is in its ability to reach web audiences with engaging content. The days of the plain text news release are gone - the Enriched News Release delivers the video, photos and graphics that web audiences demand, all attractively displayed as a single package of content. The new CNW website is a powerful showcase for that content."

Find it faster
Users of the new CNW website can locate content with exacting precision using an intelligent, filtered search system.  Search filters can then be saved for later use, or users can subscribe to an automatically-updating feed of new results via RSS. They can also save news releases to a folder for later reading - helpful when researching a story, or when a headline sparks a new story idea.

At the core of the new newswire.ca website is the adaptive and relevant user experience, powered by Endeca, a technology used by leading media and eCommerce companies around the globe.

"CNW is on the forefront of innovation in the media industry, offering news consumers an interactive user experience across all of their online content," said John Andrews, vice president, marketing and product management at Endeca. "As audience expectations become more sophisticated and online competition continues to grow, CNW is realizing the benefits of differentiating its online presence to effectively engage its users. With Endeca technology, CNW allows users the ability to experience content and information in an intuitive way."

Share online or in the news
CNW has designed its new website to showcase multimedia assets and make them easy to share, download, embed and repurpose on the web.

As media outlets evolve to a digital-first approach to news gathering and reporting, communications professionals are under increasing pressure to provide multimedia assets with a news release to give blog posts and news stories greater appeal for online viewing.

To enable this evolution, CNW has introduced its new enriched news release offering: a hybrid of traditional text newswire distribution and the static CNW Social Media Release that combined text, links, multimedia and social tools on a webpage hosted by CNW.

All news releases are now published together in a single newsfeed, displayed in an attractive, magazine-like format. CNW clients can choose to add multimedia to their newswire-issued news release and moderated comments.

Explore for more
CNW's new website users can dig deeper and learn more about the organizations issuing news releases. Events, financial details and Organization Profiles add a new level of depth to content on newswire.ca.

CNW's popular Media Daybook and Weekly Look-Ahead Calendar and webcast listings are now available on a new Online Events calendar, viewable by date, type (webcast or on-site event) or by map location. These new features have been designed to help newsrooms manage resources as effectively as possible.

The new Organization Profile feature gives journalists, online audiences and the financial community easy access to additional details within the context of a news release. The profiles provide a company logo, description, contacts and a dynamic market performance section (for public companies) that includes links to financial news releases and current stock performance information. Also featured is a real-time listing of an organization's news releases, photos and videos issued using the CNW Newswire.

The new newswire
The backbone of the newswire.ca website has always been the CNW Newswire feed. Updated numerous times over its 51-year history, the CNW Newswire is currently powered by XHTML, a robust, web-based technology that enables simultaneous text and multimedia distribution. CNW Newswire recipients can now receive text and associated multimedia, such as photos, together in one single file, allowing them to see the news opportunity as a whole with easy access to all the elements they need to build a story.

"Today, we need more than just the printed word, we need video, audio - we need the multimedia components that the new CNW file provides," said Scott Anderson, senior vice president of Content, Postmedia Network. "CNW has led the way in creating a tool that staff can utilize day-to-day."

The new CNW Newswire also ensures that news websites such as TMX.com, Globe Investor, Sympatico.ca and Yahoo! Canada can optimize their sites to display CNW's newswire feed in a more attractive way, creating greater appeal for their own audiences.

Join the conversation
CNW's blog Beyond the Wire will be highlighting features of its new website. Visit blog.newswire.ca for more information.

Feedback from professional news consumers is welcomed at [email protected].

About CNW Group
CNW connects organizations to relevant news audiences through integrated, intelligent communications and disclosure services. CNW offers newswire distribution, social media releases, webcast, video, photography, translation, regulatory filing services and MediaVantage, a web-based media monitoring application, communications and workflow solutions. CNW has been an industry leader since 1960. www.newswire.ca.

About Endeca eBusiness Solutions
Endeca's eBusiness solutions enable businesses to deliver targeted and relevant customer experiences every time, in any channel. Using all underlying product data and content, Endeca enables onlines businesses to influence customer behavior regardless of where or how customers choose to engage - online, in-store, or on-the-go. And with integrated analytics and agile tools, Endeca technology gives business teams fast and actionable insight into all customer touch points. Customer use Endeca to power millions of unique experiences everyday - including Walmart, Home Depot, Permier Farnell, Lexis Nexis, and Ford - represent 45 of the Top 100 Online Retailers, 8 of the top 10 multichannel merchants, and tens of Fortune 100 manufacturers.

SOURCE CNW Group Ltd.