The UK's national news agency, formerly the Press Association, supplying news, photos and training to media across the country.
PA Media, formerly the Press Association, is the UK's multimedia news agency. It gathers news from across the country and supplies it to newspapers, broadcasters and websites, so you often read its work under another title's name. It also runs PA Images, a photo archive of over 20 million photographs online, and has owned the stock photo agency Alamy since February 2020. PA Training is described as Europe's biggest journalism and media training company, and the group includes Globelynx, which supplies remote camera systems for TV news, along with other businesses.
The agency was founded in 1868 by a group of provincial newspaper owners who wanted more accurate news than the telegraph companies provided. It moved to Wine Office Court off Fleet Street in 1870, to 85 Fleet Street in the 1930s, and to Vauxhall Bridge Road in 1995. It launched the news website Ananova in 2000, later sold to Orange. The photo archive also holds about 10 million physical prints. It became PA Group in 2005 and PA Media in 2018. We did not find a mission statement in the pages we could read, because the company's own pages redirected and one was blocked, so please check its official site.
In the UK, the headquarters is at North Wharf Road, London W2, and a reference source listed seven locations as of 2018, though it did not name them. PA is owned by 26 shareholders, mostly national and regional newspaper publishers, with the largest being Daily Mail and General Trust, News UK and Informa. In 2024 the Central Arbitration Committee required PA to recognise the National Union of Journalists for its editorial staff, a unit of 274 workers in May 2024. Jack Lefley became editor-in-chief, appointed in 2024 and starting in 2025.
As a news agency, PA employs reporters, sub-editors, photographers, video journalists, data journalists and picture editors, along with engineers, sales and customer teams, trainers and finance staff. The agency's content covers courts, politics, sport, entertainment and the regions, which gives its staff very varied beats. The group's subsidiary RADAR, founded in 2017, is listed in a reference source but its work is not described there.
A good way to see PA's reach is to look for 'PA' in picture credits and story bylines across national websites. Check PA's own website for current information on its services and teams.
Website: www.pa.media
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