Dow Jones Cision Deal Ends in Dispute

A partnership between news publisher Dow Jones and consumer and media intelligence specialist Cision, announced less than a year ago, seems to be ending in a legal battle, after Cision reportedly called a halt to its payments.

In October last year DRNO reported that Cision had integrated Dow Jones titles into its intelligence platforms - including The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, Investor's Business Daily and Dow Jones Newswires. The aims was to help the media intelligence firm's public relations and corporate communications clients to manage brand reputation, monitor 'business-critical' topics and extend their global comms strategies. Select content from Dow Jones' business information and research tool Factiva was also included in the integration, allowing Cision clients to monitor and analyze content from thousands of licensed sources around the globe. In exchange for the exclusive license, Cision reportedly agreed to pay fees totaling around $174m over eight years.

According to a complaint document filed by Dow Jones in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Cision CEO Cali Tran (pictured) recently sent Dow Jones an email stating that Cision would suspend further payments because it had lost c.$6.5m due to the relationship and had 'unilaterally concluded' that the partnership is not economically viable for Cision. The Dow Jones filing continues: 'Only after declaring that the deal it had struck less than a year ago was 'not economically viable' did Cision's attorneys raise for the first time a number of pretexts for why it no longer wishes to pay the agreed-upon contractual license fees. These post-hoc excuses were merely an attempt to mask Cision's fundamental mismanagement of its role as licensee of the premium, reliable news content that is the essential fuel for its media-monitoring services'.

Cision has not, to DRNO's knowledge, responded publicly to the claims at this time.

Web sites: www.cision.com and www.dowjones.com