PA Media

PA Media (formerly the Press Association) is a multimedia news agency operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Not to be confused with Associated Press.
PA Media
FormerlyPress Association
TypePress agency
Founded1868 (1868) in United Kingdom
HeadquartersNorth Wharf Road
London, W2
United Kingdom
Number of locations
7 (2018)
ParentPA Media Group

PA Media is part of PA Media Group Limited,[1] 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 Informa. 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, a digital copywriting and content strategy agency; and StreamAMG, a video streaming business.[2]

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.[3]

PA Media's customers are varied, consisting of non-media customers, business brands, commercial companies, government and not-for-profit organisations.[4]

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.[5]

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.[6]

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.[7]

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[8] 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.

  • News reporters.
  • In sport, PA Media reports on the major events around the world including tennis, golf, rugby, horse racing and key football tournaments.
  • PA Media's entertainment journalists gather celebrity coverage, star interviews and independent reviews.
  • Award-winning[9] images from PA Images provide photographic content for the news, sport and entertainment genres from around the world. Images are multi-format and available for multiple platforms, e.g. tablet, smartphone.

In March 2015, PA launched a training bursary scheme[10] for Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) 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[11] to provide election data on all of the parliamentary candidates standing around the country; and joined forces with Facebook[12] 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[13] to meet the requirements of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which adopted the code previously overseen by the Press Complaints Commission.

Alamy

Alamy, a global stock photo agency with over 125 million images, was wholly acquired by PA Media in February 2020.[14] 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 (Advanced Media Group) 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.[15]

Key people

Board of directors
  • Murdoch MacLennan (Chairman, PA Media Group)
  • Clive Marshall (Chief Executive, PA Media Group)
  • Tony Watson (Managing Director, PA Media)
  • Andrew Dowsett, (Chief Operating Officer, PA Media Group)
  • James Goode (Chief Financial Officer, PA Media Group)
  • Geraldine Allinson (Chairman, KM Group)
  • Rebekah Brooks (Chief Executive, News UK)
  • Dominic Fitzpatrick (Managing Director, The Irish News)

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:

See also

References
  1. Sweney, Mark; Ben Dowell (14 June 2012). "PA Group records 85% increase in profits and boosts chief executive's pay". The Guardian.
  2. "Our Brands - PA Media Group overview of the group companies". PA Media Group.
  3. "PA Images". paimages.co.uk. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  4. Burrell, Ian (28 February 2011). "Ian Burrell: Agency hatched in Victorian cab has evolved for 21st-century". The Independent.
  5. "PA sells weather business MeteoGroup for £160m". The Telegraph. 16 December 2013.
  6. AAP (6 February 2015). "Press Assoc sells finance division". The Daily Telegraph.
  7. "Brand new page". PA Media Group.
  8. Turvill, William (28 October 2014). "Former BBC News website editor Pete Clifton named new Press Association editor-in-chief ahead of Jonathan Grun departure". The Guardian.
  9. Guardian Staff (11 March 2015). "Press awards: Everyday Sexism founder wins Georgina Henry prize". The Guardian.
  10. Lambourne, Helen (31 March 2015). "Press Association launches newsroom diversity bid". Hold The Front Page.
  11. Linford, Paul (20 April 2015). "Press Association to provide election data feed to Google". Hold The Front Page.
  12. Woods, Ben (31 March 2015). "Facebook partners with the Press Association for its curated Election 2015 content". The Next Web.
  13. Greenslade, Roy (25 March 2015). "PA creates online course to teach journalists about the editors' code". The Guardian.
  14. "PA Media Group Acquires Alamy, the Global Stock Imagery Business". yahoo.com. PR Newswire. 11 February 2020.
  15. "RADAR press release". PA Media. PA Media Group. Retrieved 18 September 2018.

Further reading
  • Silberstein-Loeb, Jonathan (2014). The International Distribution of News: The Associated Press, Press Association, and Reuters, 1848–1947.
  • Moncrieff, Chris (2001). Living on a Deadline: A History of the Press Association ISBN 1852279176
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