Former journalist and Hispanicize founder Manny Ruiz is starting a new venture. He’s announcing the launch of Hispanicize Wire, a “budget friendly” multimedia press release wire service today.
Manny, who left his job at the Miami Herald in 1994 to start his own business and later move into the public relations field, launched Hispanic PR Wire in 2000. He sold Hispanic PR Wire, Hispanic Digital Network and LatinClips to British media conglomerate United Business Media, owners of PR Newswire, in 2008 for $5.5 million.
A non-compete clause didn’t allow him to start a similar service until now. Manny is the majority partner and CEO of Hispanicize Wire. Cristy Clavijo-Kish, Danny Correa and Katherine Johnson round up the team.
“We’ll have a staff of six to start and several freelancers,” says Manny. “The most important thing about the team is that we’ve reunited the core management team that built Hispanic PR Wire. That’s priceless and makes us extremely agile…. In some ways, we’ve been waiting for this opportunity for five years.”
Manny says he’ll be able to lead both Hispanicize Wire and the Hispanicize conference and events without a problem. “Hispanicize Wire and the Hispanicize event complement each other because we have strong overlap of clients, partnerships and target audiences.”
Hispanicize Wire will be part of the Hispanicize brand of companies that include the annual Hispanicize 2014 event, Hispanicize digital, the Latina Mom Bloggers network, the Hispanic PR Blog, Being Latino and DigiBunch.
The company will be based in Miami with a satellite office in Los Angeles.
