David Steinberg, Former Chief Executive of PR Newswire, Dies at 85
CommPRO News Update
David Steinberg, a prize-winning business writer for the New York Herald Tribune, retired chief executive of PR Newswire and chairman of Canada Newswire, died on March 8, 2017, due to complications from surgery. He was 85.
Mr. Steinberg devoted his life to writing and reporting news stories and was instrumental in creating the global communications networks that disseminated them.
Born in 1932 in the Bronx, New York, he began his journalism career distributing New York's daily newspapers to his teachers in junior high school and later at DeWitt Clinton High School. After school hours, he worked as a Wall Street messenger collecting handwritten stock quotes for the New York Herald Tribune's financial news statisticians. While a freshman at City College of New York, he became a full-time copyboy at the Herald Tribune and was appointed the paper's college correspondent for CCNY.
Before graduating from City in 1953, he was named a copy editor in the Trib's business and financial news department. He switched to writing in 1956 and his investigative articles appeared in the New York and Paris newspapers. During his fifteen years on the Trib's editorial staff, Mr. Steinberg reported on developments in virtually every major industry. In 1958 he won the first ever Loeb Newspaper Award for "distinguished business reporting." He traveled extensively to interview international business leaders and heads of state for his weekly column, "World Tradewinds."
Mr. Steinberg was the first American journalist Fidel Castro invited to see "La Habana Nueva." Eager for a positive review, Castro ordered casino croupiers to let Mr. Steinberg win every hand. Upon his return to New York, Mr. Steinberg filed a less-than-favorable report on the new regime. He was not invited back. In Helsinki, he was given the key to the city for a series of articles on Finland's growing economy and efforts to improve trade relations with the United States. Two of these articles were deemed valuable enough to US trade and investors to be read into the 1961 US Congressional Record.
During New York's 114-day citywide newspaper strike in 1963, Mr. Steinberg served as business and financial news editor of the "Daily Report," a temporary strike tabloid. Later that year, Mr. Steinberg joined PR Newswire (PRN), which pioneered simultaneous high-speed distribution of press releases to news media over leased Teletype circuits. The major architect of the innovative international network, he served as PR Newswire president and chief executive for 16 years until retirement in 1992 and continued as vice chairman of PR Newswire and chairman of Canada Newswire until 2002.
In 1965, Mr. Steinberg secured recognition of PRN operations by the New York and American stock exchanges and the Securities and Exchange Commission, allowing transmission of corporate and financial news releases directly to Wall Street as a new vehicle of disclosure in full compliance with "timely disclosure" regulations. Under his direction, PRN became a state-of-the art digital communications network, acquired several local "pr wires," and evolved into an international service with some 700 employees transmitting hundreds of time-critical and market-sensitive news releases daily to hundreds of news media and the financial community.
Today, PR Newswire is a global operation owned by Cision, a worldwide media company that also owns Gorkana, PRWeb, Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and iContact. Headquartered in Chicago, Cision serves over 100,000 customers in 170 countries and 40 languages.
Mr. Steinberg was a former governor of the New York Financial Writers Association, president of the World Trade Writers Association, a member of the Deadline Chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, the Professional Journalism Society and the Silurians, a New York group of veteran news editors and reporters.
Memorial contributions can be made to CancerCare (www.cancercare.org) or the Simon Wiesenthal Center (www.wiesenthal.com).
