PA Media (formerly the Press Association) is a multimedia

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency ma ...

. It is part of PA Media Group Limited, a private company with 26 shareholders, most of whom are national and regional newspaper publishers. The biggest shareholders include the

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News UK News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of ...

, and

Informa Informa plc is a British publishing, business intelligence, and exhibitions group based in London, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has offices in 30 countries and around 12,000 ...

. PA Media Group also encompasses Globelynx, which provides TV-ready remotely monitored camera systems for corporate clients to connect with TV news broadcasters in the UK and worldwide; TNR, a specialist communications consultancy; Sticky, a digital copywriting and content strategy agency; and StreamAMG, a video streaming business. The group's photography arm, PA Images, has a portfolio comprising more than 20 million photographs online and around 10 million in physical archives dating back 150 years.

History

Founded in 1868 by a group of provincial newspaper proprietors, the PA provides a London-based service of news-collecting and reporting from around the United Kingdom. The news agency's founders sought to produce a more accurate and reliable alternative to the monopoly service of the telegraph companies. In January 1870 the agency moved from temporary offices into new headquarters at 7 Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street. At 5am on Saturday 5 February 1870, its first press telegram was transmitted. The agency's first Editor-in-Chief was Arthur Cranfield, appointed in 1926. In 1995, PA moved from Fleet Street to Vauxhall Bridge Road, enabling the company to rapidly expand its output particularly in the sports and new media divisions. The Press Association launched the

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news website in 2000. Ananova was then sold to

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. In 2005, the company changed its name to PA Group. In December 2013, PA Group sold its weather business MeteoGroup, Europe's largest private sector weather company, to global growth investment firm General Atlantic. In February 2015, PA announced the sale of its finance publications divisions, which included TelecomFinance and SatelliteFinance. In September 2018 it was announced that the news agency was renamed from Press Association to PA Media, and the umbrella company from PA Group Limited to PA Media Group Limited. This coincided with a move from their Vauxhall Bridge Road offices to a new space that would accommodate the move toward digital media. The editor-in-chief of the news agency is Jack Lefley, who was appointed in 2024 and began the role in 2025. In June 2024, the

Central Arbitration Committee The Central Arbitration Committee is a UK government body, established in 1975, whose task is to oversee the regulation of UK labour law as it relates to trade union recognition and collective bargaining. Chairs * Michael Burton *Former deputy c ...

forced PA to recognize the

National Union of Journalists The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is a trade union supporting journalists in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The NUJ was founded in 1907 and has 20,693 members. It is a member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Trades ...

as the official union representing PA's editorial employees. As of May, the bargaining unit was composed of 274 workers.

Other divisions and ventures

PA Training

PA Training is Europe's biggest journalism and media training company. It was formed in 2006, when the Press Association acquired Trinity Mirror's training centre in Newcastle upon Tyne. The NCTJ course in Newcastle has been around since 1969. The business already owned the former Westminster Press-owned Editorial Centre and merged the two businesses to become PA Training.

Alamy

Alamy Alamy Limited (d/b/a alamy) is a British privately owned stock photography agency launched in September 1999. It is an online supplier of stock images, videos, and other image material. Their content comes from agencies and independent photograp ...

, a global stock photo agency with over 125 million images, was wholly acquired by PA Media in February 2020. The purchase enables PA Media to enter the international stock photography market.

Other subsidiaries

Other subsidiaries include Globelynx, founded in 2001; Sticky Content, acquired in full between 2013 and 2015; StreamAMG (Advanced Media Group), acquired in April 2017; and RADAR, founded in 2017.

References