Living on a Deadline: A History of the Press Association

by Chris Moncrieff (Author), Tony Blair (Foreword)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.25

  The Press Association is the premier news-gathering agency in the UK, and this volume presents the history of the organization. However, this book is more than the history of an organization that has established itself as one of the most successful independent news agencies in the world. The PA has become a mirror of the society it has covered since its inception in 1868, and its record of political, sporting and social life since that time is a documentary account of the changing nature of Britain as it developed as a nation. This book tells the story of the people who founded the PA when the telegraph companies were privatized. This important change allowed independent agencies to establish their services to the regional press and present an objective opinion to the hundreds of thousands of new readers created by the changing nature of late Victorian society. As the PA moved into the 20th century, its role as a disseminator of information fitted entirely with the times, as the general public became better educated and more politically aware. In the latter part of the century, the PA started to cover events abroad - up until the considered business of Reuters - as its access to information become second to none.