Press Association

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

PA is part of PA Group Limited, a private company with 26 shareholders, most of whom are national and regional newspaper publishers. The biggest shareholders include the Daily Mail & General Holdings Group,News UK, and UBM Group. PA 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; and Sticky Content, the UK's leading digital copywriting and content strategy agency.

PA, 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 has continually evolved to provide businesses, brands and public sector organisations with multimedia content. PA’s products and services span across sports data APIs, hosted live blogs, social media content, media training, page production services and TV listings.

PA’s customers are varied, consisting of non-media customers, business brands, commercial companies, Government and not-for-profit organisations.

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.

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