A technology company that has provided secure transfer of news and images to mainly UK news publishers for decades is closing.
Newslink, which also trades as Wirefast, has told customers it is going into liquidation.
Its history goes back to pre-world wide web 1986 and it describes itself as “the largest independent news aggregation and delivery service in the UK”.
It claimed to handle 30,000 news stories a day, sending material electronically direct to publishers from thousands of contributors including staff and freelance journalists, news agencies, Government offices and the public and private sector.
Newslink was designed to ensure agency content appears in a separate queue of messages and so is not lost in the deluge of emails which publishers receive.
Newslink summed up its proposition as follows: “When a contributor sends a story, an editor needs to see it 100% of the time within minutes, preferably seconds – this is the service Newslink delivers. We have a comprehensive service level in place to ensure we meet our clients needs with 100% platform uptime over the past ten years.”
In a note to customers sent on Friday 17 January a Newslink service delivery manager said: “It is with the greatest sadness that I was informed this morning that Newslink/Wirefast will be going into liquidation as of today and services will soon no longer be available.
“I have taken the decision to let you know at the earliest opportunity in order that you have some kind of heads up. I currently have no further information than that but would please advise you to take steps to ensure that you have everything in place to continue to send your copy into your publishers.
“If and when I have further information I will certainly be in touch to let you know. All I can offer at the moment is that I know there is a competitor of Newslink, Fingerpost, that most will probably already know, who set up a similar service many years ago which some clients moved to and so it may be an idea to contact them to find out more. Or organise with your recipients an email address that you can send to.
“I am really sorry. I know how much this will impact all of you as you have been valued clients throughout the years we have worked together.”
Michael Leidig, an agency journalist who has produced a content distribution technology called NewsX, said: “This is an opportunity for the newspapers to get together and work out how they want to receive agency and freelance content. Some want it by email, some want pictures shared by FTP [file transfer protocol], everyone wants something different. So many stories get missed as a result.”
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