PA Media


PA Media is a multimedia news agency operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
PA Media 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 Daily Mail and General Trust, News UK, and UBM. 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 Content, the UK's leading digital copywriting and content strategy agency; and StreamAMG, a video streaming business.
PA Media, the news agency, delivers a continuous feed of content via a national newswire, including text, images, video and data into newsrooms around the country. This ranges from international sports data and entertainment guides, to TV listings and archived images.
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.
PA Media’s customers are varied, consisting of non-media customers, business brands, commercial companies, government and not-for-profit organisations.

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. A committee appointed to make arrangements for the formation of the organisation said: "The Press Association is formed on the principle of co-operation and can never be worked for individual profit, or become exclusive in its character".
In January 1870 the agency moved from temporary offices into new headquarters at Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street. At 5am on Saturday 5 February 1870, its first press telegram was transmitted.
The first PA lobby correspondent in 1874 and the first sports editor in 1883. 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 Ananova news website in 2000. Ananova was then sold to Orange, and 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 2005, the company changed its name to PA Group.
In February 2015, PA announced the sale of its finance publications divisions, which included TelecomFinance and SatelliteFinance.
A full history of the Press Association was written by Chris Moncrieff, CBE, the former Political Editor of the Press Association in 2001 called "Living on a Deadline."
In June 2019, the news agency was renamed from Press Association to PA Media, and the umbrella company from PA Group Limited to PA Media Group Limited.

News Agency

PA Media’s service supplies news, sport, entertainment and images stories, delivered in multi-format for various print and digital platforms. The editor-in-chief of the news agency is Pete Clifton, who was appointed in October 2014.
PA Media provides a stream of content on wires, delivers packages for use online, or designs and delivers ready-to-publish pages for use in print. This media content now includes video and interactive graphics.
In March 2015, PA launched a training bursary scheme for Black and Asian Minority Ethnic aspiring journalists to "encourage a more ethnically and socially diverse newsroom". The scheme is in partnership with the Journalism Diversity Fund.
Around the Company's coverage of the UK General Election 2015, PA partnered with Google to provide election data on all of the parliamentary candidates standing around the country; and joined forces with Facebook to curate content from across the web for its UK Politics community page.

Other divisions and ventures

These companies are sister companies to PA Media, owned by PA Media Group.

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, and has a proud history of training many of the UK's leading journalists.
It offers courses in magazine journalism, sports, news and features, and in 2013 PA Training acquired PMA Media Training; a magazine industry training organisation.
In 2014, PA's journalism training centre in Newcastle was named by the NCTJ as the best in Britain.
In March 2015, PA Training created an online learning course so that journalists can learn about and test their knowledge of the Editors' Code of Practice. PA Training developed the course to meet the requirements of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which adopted the code previously overseen by the Press Complaints Commission.

Alamy

, 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.
PA Media Assignments
The specialist photography and video content creation communications consultancy is part of PA Media Group.

Globelynx

Globelynx was founded in 2001 and is part of PA Media Group. Globelynx connects, via its managed fibre optic network, corporate clients to TV news broadcasters in the UK and worldwide. It provides TVready remotely monitored, broadcast-quality purpose built camera systems.

Sticky Content

Sticky Content is a digital copywriting agency based in London, specialising in copy for brands. In October 2013, the PA Media Group acquired an 80% shareholding in the company, and they moved into the Vauxhall Bridge Road offices in November 2013. PA Media Group took full ownership of Sticky Content in 2015.

StreamAMG

StreamAMG provides European companies with global digital media. PA Media Group acquired a 60% shareholding in the company in April 2017.

RADAR

PA was awarded a €706,000 grant from Google in July 2017 to fund a local news automation service in collaboration with Urbs Media.

Key people

Board of directors

Louise Irwin is the Company Secretary of the PA Media Group

Shareholders

PA Media Group has 26 shareholders, many of whom are national and regional newspaper groups. They include: