PR Newswire was founded in March 1954 by Herbert Muschel, who ran the business from his town house in New York City for the first 15 years of its operation.

[9][10] By 1978, PR Newswire distributed content to approximately 250 news points and financial institutions in 75 cities using 12,000 miles of private transmission lines.

[5] In addition to its New York headquarters, the service also sent content from offices in Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco at a rate of 150 words per minute.

[11] PR Newswire acquired Mediawire in 1983, expanding the company's reach into over 125 newsrooms in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and West Virginia.

[12] ABC-TV and Indesys partnered with PR Newswire in 1989 to provide news feeds to television and entertainment editors and writers in the U.S. and Canada.

[13] Program changes, production schedules, and news from entertainment sources were transmitted over a satellite distribution network and an FM subcarrier.

[1] In the 2010s, PR Newswire and its competitor Business Wire were the target of extensive successful attacks by Ukrainian hackers, who accessed not yet published press releases to enable insider trading.

[20] According to the FBI, the case was then the world's largest known computer hacking and securities fraud, with profits exceeding $100 million in trades that were made public by the SEC, but believed to be vastly higher than that by the authorities.

[20] ProfNet is an online community of communications professionals made to provide reporters access to expert sources and a subsidiary of PR Newswire.