Britain’s once-thriving network of independent news agencies has shrunk from hundreds of businesses supplying Fleet Street with original journalism to a fraction of its former size.
Just 17 members remain in the National Association of Press Agencies (NAPA), compared with nearly 200 at its peak.
Established in 1982, NAPA represented a nationwide network of journalists whose reporting once filled Britain’s national newspapers, often without readers knowing where the stories originated or the names of the agency journalists who had written them. One of the founders of NAPA, the late Don Leigh, is pictured at the top of this article.
When the association was launched, close to 200 of the more than 300 independent agencies operating across Britain were said to be members.
Long-serving NAPA secretary Nick Constable, who still runs West Coast News, recalled that membership of the body stood at around 130 when he took on the role in 1993, while a NAPA treasurer’s report showed that 62 agencies still remained in 2020.
Some local news agencies were launched due to the withdrawal of regional correspondents as advances in technology in the 1970s and 1980s made it possible to centralise newspaper operations in London. Journalists who did not want to relocate often chose to remain in their regions and work independently, discovering that instead of supplying stories to a single newspaper, they could sell the same material to several competing publications.
Some member agencies were little more than one-person operations with a good network. What they all seemed to have in common was their ability to supply journalism across the entire media landscape, from national newspapers and broadcasters to specialist publications and international news organisations.
While many agencies concentrated on particular geographical territories, others developed specialist reporting services based on the opportunities available locally. An agency in Windsor might become an expert on the Royal Family, while those operating near major football clubs developed dedicated sports coverage.
Wales News, which covers South Wales, took advantage of Companies House being based in Cardiff to offer a specialist service to national newspaper business desks, regularly sending reporters to obtain company records that would otherwise take days to arrive by post.
Paul Horton was one of its founders in 1990, when he recalls a debate in Press Gazette about whether the area could support another news agency.
He said: “Cardiff alone had Wales News, Cambrian News and Hills Welsh Press, while Swansea was served by Dragon News and South Wales News Agency, with Mon News operating from Newport.”
Thirty-six years later, he says his agency is the only one of the six still operating.
“I remember doing a chat with Press Gazette at the time saying: ‘The Welsh Pie is big enough to feed us all.’ Well it wasn’t for long and now I am last man standing 36 years later,” he said.
Wales News once employed 14 people, including a dedicated court reporter, whereas today it operates with a team of six covering news, features and pictures. Horton says even strong stories attract far less interest from national newspapers than they did a decade ago.
But he still sees hope, saying: “Yes, it is much tougher to get news used, yes the market has diminished a lot and rapidly in the last few years and I would agree with anyone who said the business model for a traditional news agency is fractured.
“I know the strength of a decent news story might get us five or six shows in UK national titles maybe ten years ago – the same today might get one or two online shows.”
He says the biggest change for Wales News during 2026 has been a particularly sharp reduction in usage by Reach titles, which increasingly obtain shorter stories from their own regional newspapers rather than buying them from agencies.
“It is a big shame because I always enjoyed doing a lot with the district guys on the Mirror over the years – but now they have gone as well as far as Wales and a lot of Britain is concerned.”
Another agency veteran, Mark Solomons, who ran Specialist News for three decades and still produces occasional stories, believes the industry has changed so fundamentally that he would probably avoid it altogether if he were starting his career again.
“I think that we saw the best of times for agencies to work, and if I had the chance to go back again and do the same thing but now, I would probably stay out of it,” he said.
“There doesn’t seem to be any work. The sort of stuff that we used to do just doesn’t seem to be wanted anymore.”
Solomons recalls earning £120 for a newspaper page lead when he started 33 years ago, compared with £100 now offered by the Daily Express.
He said that when he recently offered a story to the Daily Star on Sunday, the newspaper told him it liked the material but could not use it because there was no budget to pay for it.
“The money just isn’t there for it any longer,” he said.
‘Diversified’ agencies still have a future
New NAPA chairman, founder of Jam Press Ben Nicholls, said he believes news agencies still have a future.
He said: “I suspect part of the problem is that some agencies were built during a very different era of journalism, when newspapers had bigger budgets, exclusives commanded higher fees and agencies could build successful businesses covering a particular geographical patch.”
He believes adaptation has been essential and says Jam Press has reinvented its business model approximately three times during its eight or nine years in operation, responding to changes in the stories publishers want, the formats they buy and the amounts they are prepared to pay.
“We were perhaps fortunate in that we started at a time when rates were already relatively low. We weren’t accustomed to the days of enormous fees for exclusives or generous newspaper budgets,” he said.
“We built our business around finding the right stories, producing them efficiently and supplying enough quality journalism to make the numbers work.
“In many ways, we were born out of frugality, and I think that helped us.”
He said that, unlike many traditional agencies, Jam Press built its business primarily around newspaper websites, concentrating on picture-led stories, lifestyle content, social media discoveries and video rather than regarding print publication as the principal objective.
“We focused on understanding what those websites needed and providing it. Getting a story into the printed newspaper was often a bonus rather than the primary objective,” Ben explained.
His approach to the relationship between agencies and publishers also differs from the confrontational position adopted by some agency veterans frustrated by declining rates.
“I’ve always believed that publishers are our customers, not our adversaries, and that’s the philosophy we’ve tried to follow at Jam Press,” he said.
“Our job as agencies is to understand what those customers need and provide the best possible service. I think the agencies that manage to do that, while keeping their own businesses commercially sustainable, will continue to find opportunities.”
Ben is determined that the disappearance of established businesses should not be interpreted as the end of the profession.
“So while it’s sad to see established agencies disappear, I certainly don’t think we should be writing an obituary for independent journalism,” he said.
Another news agency which has successfully diversified is SWNS (formerly South West News Service), which has bought out a number of local news agencies including:
- Masons News Service in Cambridge
- News Team International in Birmingham
- Mercury Press Agency in Liverpool
- Ross Parry Agency in Leeds
- National News Press Agency in London
- Centre Press Agency in Glasgow.
Today SWNS employs some 60 staff, though not all are in newsgathering roles.
Managing director Martin Winter said: “The nationals are still a major part of what we do, and we’ve always valued the relationship we have with them. But if all you’re doing is supplying hard news, pictures and video to the nationals, it’s very difficult to make that pay on its own now.
“We had the scale to try other things. If you’re a small agency and you’re scraping by doing the day-to-day work, it’s much harder to find the time or the money to do that. But you do need to find new sources of revenue.”
He said diversification had allowed SWNS to “continue doing the original journalism we love”.
For example, the agency now produces documentaries and currently has two in production for global streamers. Developing original shows for Youtube and social platforms is another growth focus, such as crime franchise Key Witness, which is entirely fuelled by SWNS journalism.
“We look at it like a monetisation waterfall – you have a streamer commission at the top which might be a multiple six-figure sum, down to a paragraph in a newspaper at the bottom. And along that journey there are multiple touchpoints where a story makes money – on social platforms, aggregators such as MSN, video distribution, an exclusive newspaper sale, newswire distribution and so on.
“That’s how you make it pay, but it’s a far more complex model than it was in the heyday of agencies.”
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