Top 100 PR Websites and Resources: The 2009 Snapshot

Editor's note: revised June 19, 2026. Originally published December 12, 2009. 2009 PR resources landscape preserved as historical record; retrospective frame and current-status notes added.

The list below captured the PR industry's online tooling and resources landscape in December 2009 — corporate sites, newsletters, news distribution services, monitoring software. The category has consolidated dramatically since. Several of the companies named were acquired, restructured, or shut down. Others remain operating at materially larger scale. The 2009 snapshot is preserved as a reference point for how the discipline was tooled at the start of the social-media era and before SaaS consolidation reshaped the category.

The continuing 2009 list:

We continued today the Top 100 PR Websites and Resources started yesterday. Yesterday we classified the best of the best in the following categories: News (General), Business and Finance, PR News, PR Blogs and Social Media. Today's focus: PR Corporate Sites, PR Newsletters, PR distribution, PR Software and Communication miscellaneous.

PR Corporate Sites

1. Waggener Edstrom — at the time the second-largest PR firm in the world after Edelman. Status update: rebranded as WE Communications in 2014; remains a major independent firm.
2. Padilla Speer Beardsley — at #13 in the O'Dwyer 2009 rankings. Status update: rebranded as Padilla in 2014, remains a major independent firm.
3. APCO Worldwide — redesigned in July 2009, then ranked #3 in the world.
4. Dan Klores — DKC PR. Status update: remains a major independent firm.
5. Taylor — the lifestyle, sports, and entertainment PR agency.
6. Allison and Partners — Status update: now Allison+Partners, part of the MDC Partners network.
7. Makovsky + Company Inc. — at the time the #25 most profitable PR company in the world.
8. Ogilvy — Ogilvy PR has since been absorbed into the broader Ogilvy network under WPP.
9. KCSA — at the time #29 in the O'Dwyer rankings.

PR Newsletters

1. Ragan — remains a major industry publication.
2. Warcmail — now WARC, owned by Ascential.
3. O'Dwyer's — remains operating; Status update: O'Dwyer's has been the subject of an acquisition by Everything-PR's publisher (in progress as of 2026).
4. PR Watch — The Weekly Spin — Center for Media and Democracy publication, still operating.
5. AdAge email newsletters — remain core industry reading.
6. Brand Republic News Bulletins — Status update: Brand Republic was discontinued by Haymarket in 2017.
7. BNET newsletters — Status update: BNET was shut down by CBS Interactive in 2011.
8. MarketingProfs — remains operating.
9. SmartBrief — remains a major newsletter platform.
10. PR News Online — remains operating.

News Distribution

1. PRWeb — acquired by Vocus in 2012; Vocus later sold to GTCR; PRWeb now part of Cision.
2. PR Newswire — acquired by Cision in 2016; remains a major distribution platform.
3. Business Wire — remains operating, owned by Berkshire Hathaway since 2006.
4. MarketWire — Status update: acquired by Nasdaq in 2014 and consolidated into Nasdaq's corporate solutions; later spun off and absorbed into Notified (West Corporation).
5. PR Leap — still operating in reduced form.
6. PR.com — still operating.
7. 24-7pressrelease — still operating.
8. eReleases — still operating under founder Mickie Kennedy.
9. Wired PR News — discontinued.
10. Newswire Today — still operating in reduced form.

PR Software

1. Vocus On-Demand — Status update: Vocus acquired PRWeb (2012), then went private with GTCR (2014), then split: Cision acquired the PR side, the marketing automation portion became Outmarket.
2. Sysomos — Status update: acquired by Marketwired in 2010, then sold to NewsCorp/Notified, then to Meltwater in 2018, then to Brandwatch as part of the broader social-listening consolidation.
3. Cision — Status update: remains the dominant PR software platform; has absorbed PR Newswire, PRWeb, Vocus's PR business, and several other category leaders through 2016–2022.
4. DNA13 — Status update: acquired by CNW Group in 2009, then absorbed into the broader Cision platform.
5. BuzzStream — still operating as outreach and link-building software.
6. PIER Systems — discontinued.
7. Nielsen BuzzMetrics — Status update: spun off as NM Incite; later restructured.
8. Reputation Defender — now operates as ReputationDefender / part of Norton LifeLock's reputation services.
9. Radian6 — Status update: acquired by Salesforce in 2011; absorbed into Marketing Cloud's Social Studio, which was discontinued in 2024.
10. WordStream — acquired by Gannett (USA Today owner) in 2018; now part of LocaliQ.

Communication Miscellaneous

1. Basecamp — still operating as the project management tool from 37signals.
2. Remember The Milk — still operating.
3. Salesforce — remains the dominant enterprise CRM.
4. Oncontact — discontinued; absorbed by various successors.
5. Microsoft Dynamics CRM — now Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement.
6. RescueTime — still operating.
7. SendBlaster — still operating.
8. VerticalResponse — acquired by Deluxe Corporation in 2015.
9. Lyris — discontinued/absorbed into Aurea Software.

The 2009-to-2026 view

Three structural shifts have reshaped the PR resources stack since this 2009 snapshot.

Massive consolidation. Cision has absorbed PR Newswire, PRWeb, Vocus's PR business, Brandwatch (which absorbed Sysomos), and several other category leaders. Meltwater, Muck Rack, NewsWhip, and Notified now anchor what's left of the independent category. The 2009 landscape — dozens of independent specialists — has compressed into roughly six major platforms plus a long tail of niche tools.

Social listening became AI listening. The 2009 social media monitoring category (Radian6, Sysomos, DNA13) was based on keyword and sentiment analysis of social posts. The 2024–2026 category is increasingly about monitoring what AI engines say about brands — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. The discipline of AI Visibility tracking and Generative Engine Optimization has emerged as the successor category.

The newsletter stack changed. The newsletter list above survives partially. Ragan, AdAge, SmartBrief, and MarketingProfs remain. PR News, O'Dwyer's, and Brand Republic have variously shrunk, changed hands, or discontinued. The PR trade publication landscape now includes Everything-PR (publishing since 2009, the same year this list was published), Muck Rack Daily, PRovoke Media, and a long tail of category-specialized newsletters.

For the current PR tooling and intelligence landscape see the EPR AI Visibility and GEO archives.

Related from the EPR archive: Media Monitoring Tools for Public Relations: The 2015 Top 100 Snapshot · Top 50 iPhone Apps for PR Pros: The 2012 Snapshot · The Leading PR Firms in 2026 — and Why the Definition Just Changed