Dialog wins BBC news cutting contract

NEWS Dialog Corporation - an online information specialist - has clinched a five-year contract from the BBC for the provision of an electronic news cuttings (ENC) service. The deal is thought to be worth £3m to £4m. The ENC service will run over the BBC's corporate Intranet, and will give reporters, researchers and management desktop access to information from around 80 national and regional publications. The service will be based on Infosort, Dialog's proprietary indexing technology. Dialog chief executive, Dan Wagner said the company faced "stiff competition" for the contract, but he would not confirm reports that Reuters was one of the companies to lose out. Wagner said Dialog's mixture of data, technology and a consultative approach was what attracted the BBC. A BBC spokeswoman said the organisation had used Dialog in the past, but hadn't previously committed to an agreement of the size and type of this week's contract. Dialog was formed last year when Maid acquired US-based Knight-Ridder Information.