News agencies
Suomen Tietotoimisto (Finnish News Agency ‑ STT) is the only commercial news agency in Finland producing a real-time and comprehensive news service. STT is an independent, national news provider for media as well as a provider of communication services for leading companies, organisations and government agencies. STT, founded in 1887, is one of the oldest news agencies in the world.
STT comprises three business segments: media services, communication services and image services. Its sister company, Nyhetsbyrån FNB, is a news service for the Swedish-language media, which received from a ministerial subsidy of €440,000 in 2015. STT owns Lehtikuva, Finland’s leading picture agency with an extensive archive of pictures from 1951 onwards, available for purchase by media customers. STT has foreign correspondents in Brussels and Sydney. For over a century, STT has been the backbone of domestic and foreign news delivery in Finland, especially for the printed press.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, four main political parties had their own press agencies: the Centre Party had Uutiskeskus (UK), the Social Democratic Party had Working People’s News Agency (TST), the National Coalition Party had Press News Service (LSP) and the People's Democrats had Democratic Press Service (DLP). However, these agencies withered away when the press agency subsidy for parties was discontinued. Currently the parties have limited news services at their websites.
The only surviving agency of this kind is UP-Uutispalvelu (UP-News Service), based on the former TST and merged with DLP in 1997. UP-News service is a small-scale agency in Facebook and provides news on politics, labour market and the economy.
STT offers news in Finnish, Swedish and English. A list of latest news is available at the company website.Media services include calendars, a news archive, anniversary interviews, broadcasting TV schedules and press releases. In addition to traditional media outlets, news is provided for online media and smartphones and as breaking news SMS service. The agency offers monitoring of specific industry sectors to companies.
The main customers in television are MTV3 and Nelonen Media Finland. At the beginning of 2007, the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle cancelled its subscription to STT news service, greatly reducing its income. Nearly all Finnish news media and several international customers subscribe to STT services. The public service broadcaster Yle has its own news service. In 2016, turnover was €15.8m. STT employs 120 people.
STT is owned by 34 newspaper and media companies. The major owners are newspaper publishers Sanoma Media Finland 33.1 percent, Alma Media 26.6 percent, TS-Group 18.0 percent, Keskisuomalainen group 9.1 percent, HSS Media 1.3 percent, KSF Media 3.5 percent, Ilkka group 1.3 percent, Yle 1.3 percent and other companies combined 7.8 percent.