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The story
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. The agency's first Editor-in-Chief was Arthur Cranfield, appointed in 1926. The PA then moved to 85 Fleet Street in the 1930s.
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.
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.
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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 forced PA to recognize the National Union of Journalists as the official union representing PA's editorial employees. As of May, the bargaining unit was composed of 274 workers.
From Wikipedia’s article on PA Media, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5