Cision's History

Media constantly evolves and Cision has constantly evolved to stay more than one step ahead of it. Yet throughout it all, one thing has remained the same - our commitment to bringing communicators and the media together in order to get their stories out.

Our start goes back to 1892 as the advertising department of Svenska Telegrambyrån, a company providing press clipping services in Sweden. Over the years, the company expanded throughout Europe and North America, and added media contact database and media analysis to our product offering. This global company, operating throughout the world under a number of different names such as Observer, Romeiki, Bacon's and Bowdens, rebranded as Cision in 2007. Today, Cision is the market leader in PR software and media tools with operations in Europe, North America and Asia, and partners in an additional 125 countries.

Cision North America

From our earliest printed catalogs of publications and editorial contacts that took the last name of our founder Robert H. Bacon, to Cision's current online database that is updated nearly 20,000 times every day, we've always been the world's leading source of media contacts and information.

Today, our innovative solutions help PR professionals and media effectively manage every aspect of the communications lifecycle with the tools they need to plan, connect, monitor and analyze their communications.

And tomorrow's history is being made today. While the rest of the world is still trying to figure out how to manage Web 2.0, we're helping write Web 3.0 by creating the tools that will help communicators engage with and capitalize on the Semantic Web of the future. We're stepping up our efforts to complement our core services for PR professionals with information and vital resources for members of the media. We remain committed to the same principles of innovation that have inspired us since our very beginning as a company. It's that commitment that will keep Cision the place where communicators and the media connect for the next 100 years.

Cision North America's Timeline

• 1932 - Founded as Bacon's Clipping Bureau
• 1934 - Bacon's Publicity Manual introduced (the nation's first publication to provide advice to PR practitioners)
• 1952 - Bacon's Publicity Checker - Trade Press directory issued (names of publications, editor and reporter contact information)
• 1960 - Daily newspapers added to media monitoring services
• 1970 - Press release mailing services introduced
• 1976 - Bacon's Publicity Checker - Newspaper directory issued
• 1978-1990 - Several specialized media directories introduced
• 1991-1997 - No longer known as a trade press clipping bureau, Bacon's becomes the leading monitoring company in the United States
• 1994 - MediaSource® CD introduced
• 1995 - Bacon's acquired by Primedia
• 1997-1998 - In-depth industry specialization focus added to media research
• 2000 - MediaSource® launched as first online media research and distribution service; Internet monitoring service launched; Bacon's collects web clippings from more than 7,000 news web sites; PR MediaNews (a web-based, daily online newsletter focused exclusively on the media with information on editor changes, magazine profiles and trend reporting) launched; and TV closed-captioning monitoring service begun
• 2001 - Bacon's acquired by Observer AB, based in Stockholm, Sweden, the global leader in the media intelligence industry
• 2002 - Media Pulse broadcast monitoring services acquired by Bacon's to provide a single source for global print, broadcast and online media monitoring; International media monitoring introduced
• 2003 - Chicago News, a broadcast monitoring service, acquired by Bacon's; MediaSource® monitoring module launched; and media evaluation
• 2004 - MediaMap acquired by Bacon's to boost research data by adding industry-specific media information
• 2005 - Delahaye, a media evaluation and consulting services firm, and Multivision, a broadcast monitoring and analysis firm were acquired by Bacon's to further develop and expand its broadcast media monitoring and media evaluation services
• 2007 - Bacon's is rebranded as Cision, and serves as the company's headquarters in North America. Cision US Inc. is headquartered in Chicago with 24 offices nationwide and over 790 employees.
• 2007 -- Cision campaign management software – launched as CisionPoint in October 2007 – is available in nine languages, and is used by 49 of the top 50 PR agencies, corporations, nonprofits, universities and solo practitioners.
• 2009 - CisionPoint wins the 2009 CODiE Award as Best Online News Service
• 2010 - The Cision Social Media Dashboard wins the 2010 CODiE Award as Best Social Media Aggregation Service
• 2011 - CisionPoint wins the 2011 CODiE Award as Best Marketing/Public Relations Solution
• 2012 - CisionPoint wins the 2012 CODiE Award for Best Business Information Resource
• 2013 - CisionPoint wins the 2013 CODiE Award for Best Media and Information Monitoring Solution

Contact Cision today.