Comtex
Encyclopedia
Comtex News Network, Inc. (OTCBB:CMTX) is a distributor of news on the Internet, specializing in the business and financial market sectors. The company is a wholesaler of electronic real-time news and content gathered from thousands of sources, including national and international news bureaus, agencies and publications (including Business Wire
, Dow Jones
, McClatchy Information Services
, PR Newswire
and United Press International
). Comtex enhances and standardizes the content received from such sources in order to provide editorially consistent and technically uniform products to its customers. Its processing includes adding stock ticker symbols, indexing by keyword and category and converting diverse publisher materials and formats into the industry standard delivery format NewsML
, an XML
derivative. The company slogan is "Relevant. Reliable. Real-Time."
analysis. Comtex clients include information distributors such as MarketWatch
, Factiva
, Bloomberg
, and Reuters
, websites, corporate intranets and market data applications.
In 2004 Chip Brian joined Comtex as VP, Operations and was named President in 2005 and CEO in 2006. A new management team was charged with the reducing debt, strengthening the company's financial base and diversifying product lines.
Business Wire
Business Wire is a company that disseminates full-text news releases from thousands of companies and organizations worldwide to news media, financial markets, disclosure systems, investors, information web sites, databases and other audiences. The company distributes news via its own patented...
, Dow Jones
Dow Jones Newswires
Dow Jones Newswires is the real-time financial news organization owned by Dow Jones . Founded in 1882, its primary competitors are Bloomberg L.P. and Thomson Reuters. The company reports more than 300,000 subscribers -- including brokers, traders, analysts and fund managers -- as of July 2011.-...
, McClatchy Information Services
The McClatchy Company
The McClatchy Company is a publicly traded American publishing company based in Sacramento, California. It operates 30 daily newspapers in 15 states and has an average weekday circulation of 2.2 million and Sunday circulation of 2.8 million...
, PR Newswire
PR Newswire
PR Newswire started out in 1954 as a vendor hired by companies and agencies to send out text press releases to the media. Today, PR Newswire is hired by corporations, public relations firms and non-governmental organizations to deliver news and multimedia content...
and United Press International
United Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
). Comtex enhances and standardizes the content received from such sources in order to provide editorially consistent and technically uniform products to its customers. Its processing includes adding stock ticker symbols, indexing by keyword and category and converting diverse publisher materials and formats into the industry standard delivery format NewsML
NewsML
NewsML is an XML standard designed to provide a media-independent, structural framework for multi-media news. NewsML was developed by — and is a registered trademark of — the IPTC...
, an XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
derivative. The company slogan is "Relevant. Reliable. Real-Time."
Product areas
The company's product lines include CustomWires, subject-specific newswires including energy, finance, international and public company information; Comtex TopNews, comprising several categories of editorially selected news stories of the day; Publisher Full Feeds, which are deliveries from specific publishers providing their content offerings; and SmarTrend, based on proprietary time-series pattern recognitionPattern recognition
In machine learning, pattern recognition is the assignment of some sort of output value to a given input value , according to some specific algorithm. An example of pattern recognition is classification, which attempts to assign each input value to one of a given set of classes...
analysis. Comtex clients include information distributors such as MarketWatch
MarketWatch
MarketWatch operates a financial information website that provides business news, analysis and stock market data to some 6 million people. MarketWatch offers personal finance news and advice, tools for investors and access to industry research. Along with its flagship website, the company operates...
, Factiva
Factiva
Factiva is a business information and research tool owned by Dow Jones & Company. Factiva aggregates content from both licensed and free sources, and provides organizations with search, alerting, dissemination, and other information management capabilities...
, Bloomberg
Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P...
, and Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
, websites, corporate intranets and market data applications.
History
Comtex was incorporated in New York in 1980 and operated under the name Academic Micropublishing Company, Inc. until 1981, when the name was changed to Comtex Scientific Corporation. From 1989 until 1991 Infotechnology ("Infotech"), a Delaware business development corporation, then principally engaged in the information and communications business, acquired majority ownership of Comtex. From 1991 until 2006 AMASYS Corporation, a successor in interests to Infotech, held a majority ownership position, via a combination of stock and debt. In 2006 Comtex repaid all of its outstanding long-term debt and AMASYS sold all its shares. In late 1999 Comtex changed its name to Comtex News Network, Inc.In 2004 Chip Brian joined Comtex as VP, Operations and was named President in 2005 and CEO in 2006. A new management team was charged with the reducing debt, strengthening the company's financial base and diversifying product lines.