New Zealand Press Association

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The New Zealand Press Association is a news agency based in New Zealand. It provides national and international news to the media of the country. It was founded in the 1879 and is the largest news agency in New Zealand.

Daily and Sunday newspapers owned by APN News & Media, Fairfax New Zealand, Allied Press, Ashburton Guardian, The Gisborne Herald, The Wairoa Star Ltd, Whakatane Beacon and the Westport News are members of NZPA. Until January 2006, member newspapers were obliged by contract to supply their home town news copy to NZPA. Sub-editing was done at NZPA's Wellington headquarters and the copy then redistributed to all members. NZPA's own journalists also contributed to the national news wire, which by 2005 consisted of approximately 50 per cent each of copy contributed by the member newspapers and the other half by NZPA's own staff.

In 2005 NZPA announced that the 125 year old news sharing model would cease in January 2006, leaving NZPA responsible for news gathering and production of the national wire. This resulted in NZPA owning outright the intellectual property to the national news wire which it is now free to sell to all other media on a commercial basis. At the same time NZPA established news services other than the text based newswire including photo-news and graphics services as well as providing news, features and other information in page ready format.

About 130 national stories are distributed every 12hours, and approximately 40 journalists, based in Sydney (2 staff), Auckland 4 staff, New Zealand Parliament Buildings 5 staff and at the head office in Wellington and employed by NZPA Ltd. Where prior to January 2006 staff were focused on sub-editing they now concentrate on news gathering. As well as full time staff, national networks of both correspondents and photographers have been established.

NZPA operate business, national and a sports desk which also covers racing and employ a rural reporter.

NZPA manages external newsfeeds from Reuters, Australian Associated Press and Associated Press and sub-edits the items for a New Zealand audience before distributing them on to member newspapers. NZPA also provides these services with reciprocal rights to its content for sale overseas though practically little content is directly used.

NZPA operates a content sales division providing NZPA authored content on a commercial basis to corporate and government clients. It also operates a media release distribution service circulating media releases to media on behalf of clients domestically and also across the world through Asianet, a consortium of press agencies.