COMTEX Announces an Anti-Ticker Spamming Initiative; 'Primary Ticker Value-Add' to Curtail Spamming of Company Names.

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

ALEXANDRIA, VA.--(business wire)--Jan. 8, 2001

COMTEX News Network, Inc. (OTC BB:CMTX), announced today that it is employing a new "Primary Ticker Value-Add", an anti-ticker spamming initiative, in an effort to address an industry problem and limit over-tickering to more effectively provide customers with pertinent information needed to perform news searches based on company ticker symbols.

Enhancing publisher content by adding tickers is a key COMTEX value-add that over 1100 customers depend on for effective access to targeted content. Increasingly, corporations are including full descriptive paragraphs at the end of press releases that include a list of companies with whom they do business.

Until now, all companies listed were tickered including companies not of primary interest or integral to the press release content. The COMTEX primary ticker value-add eliminates the tickering of these extraneous companies and provides ticker symbols only for the companies central to the release content.

The COMTEX primary ticker value-add is built on and leverages COMTEX' proprietary content aggregation technology, Equinox, COMTEX' 10 years of industry experience of working with the dependent variables and factors to effectively determine the relevancy of a primary ticker.

Equinox eliminates redundancy, over-tickering or ticker spamming in real-time and for customers choosing to take advantage of this new technology, only minimal integration on the part of COMTEX customers is required.

"Ticker spamming has created confusion and can potentially devalue legitimate news. Including tickers that are neither newsworthy nor relevant diminishes the content that serious distributors and users demand. As the leading infomediary and industry pioneer, it was COMTEX' role to provide the market with a proactive solution," said Sheri Robey-Lapan, Vice President, Marketing & Corporate Strategy, in charge of product development for COMTEX. "This initiative allows COMTEX to better provide its customers with relevant news and information so they can deliver the best possible content and products to their subscribers."

COMTEX News Network, Inc.

COMTEX News Network, Inc. (OTC BB:CMTX), a full service, business-to-business infomediary, aggregates and redistributes diverse, real-time global news and information to resellers in the Internet, Wall Street and corporate markets.

COMTEX' innovative technology gathers nearly 20,000 stories a day from over 10,000 diverse, global sources to create its subject-specific, value-added headline and vertical-market news products for distribution to over 1100 information services and re-distributors throughout the world, reaching millions of end users.

COMTEX' products include CustomWires(R), Newsroom Enhanced Products, News Solutions, Publisher Full-Feeds and Processing Services. Located in Alexandria, VA, COMTEX can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.comtexnews.net.

Note: All product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Except for the historical information contained herein, this press release contains forward-looking statements including those about COMTEX' anticipated financial performance for the 2001 fiscal year, demand for the company's products, performance of the sales force, customer retention, etc.

These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated herein, including the occurrence of unanticipated events or circumstances relating to the fact that COMTEX is in a highly competitive industry subject to rapid technological, product and price changes.

Other factors include the possibility that demand for the Company's products may not occur or continue at sufficient levels, changing global economic and competitive conditions, technological and other risks, costs and delays associated with the start-up and operation of major capital projects, changing governmental regulations and other risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

COMTEX undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.