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PA Media (formerly the Press Association) is a multimedia news agency. It 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 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, a digital copywriting and content strategy agency; and StreamAMG, a video streaming business. 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.
In January 1870 the agency moved from temporary offices into new headquarters at 7 Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street. At 5 a.m. on Saturday 5 February 1870, its first press telegram was transmitted. 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.
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.
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.
The business already owned the former Westminster Press-owned Editorial Centre and merged the two businesses to become PA Training.
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