agency
| Ljubljana, 5°C
STA d.o.o. Ljubljana
Tivolska cesta 48, 1000 Ljubljana
Phone: +386 (0)1 24 10 100
Fax: +386 (0)1 43 42 970
VAT ID:
SI73929948
Registration number:
5488745
IBAN account number:
SI56 1010 0004 6764 568 at Intesa Sanpaolo d.d.
Media register number:
398
Registration at the District Court in Ljubljana:
Register of Companies entry number: 1/1247/00
The Slovenian Press Agency (STA) was launched on 20 June 1991, just days before Slovenia officially declared independence. This gave the fledgling state a national press agency as a key communication channel, which was initially geared towards foreign audiences.
The STA, a limited liability company in 100% ownership of the state, is governed by a special Act on the Slovenian Press Agency. It entered into force in July 2011 and stipulates that the STA performs a public service by providing ongoing, comprehensive, accurate and unbiased reporting on events in Slovenia and abroad for domestic and foreign audiences, in the Slovenian and English languages.
The service is provided by a team of over 80 staff reporters and back-office personnel in the Ljubljana headquarters, and domestic as well as foreign correspondents. Starting out as a single news desk, the STA has branched into specialised departments spanning Home Policy, Foreign Policy, Business, Sports, Culture, Correspondents and the English Service.
Correspondents play an important role in coverage provided by a national press agency such as the STA. The first foreign posting opened in 1994 in Brussels and the STA now has correspondents in Brussels, New York and Zagreb. Local correspondents are posted in all Slovenian regions.
At the outset the STA's main mission was to inform public audiences about events in the newly established country that was soon engulfed by war, and news in English was a constituent part of the service. Translation was initially subcontracted but in 1994 an in-house English Service was launched.
To this day the STA remains an important communications channel for reaching foreign audiences, and the English Service is the leading provider of daily news in English. English Service subscribers include not just foreign press agencies but also embassies and corporate players.
The STA is a member of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) and the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) and a partner in the regional alliances of Mediterranean and Balkans new agencies, AMAN and ABNA. It has news wire exchanges with key global agencies, which are a key source of content for international news.
The STA has always kept abreast of the break-neck pace of communications developments and has adjusted its strategy accordingly. It was an early adopter of web and quickly tailored its products to mobile devices when mobile applications started to boom. A special in-house task force, dubbed STAnt, is in charge of development and new technologies.
Since 2006, when its Picture Service went live, the STA has been an indispensible source of photography. In 2009 its product portfolio was expanded with an audio service tailored to radio stations. STA content is also available on major social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Youtube.
Aside from the traditional news wire, the agency offers premium content such as chronologies of key events, tables and infographics. It also has an archive containing more than two million news reports, 500,000 photographs and 70,000 audio clips.
In addition to rendering a public service as determined by the law, the STA also performs market-based services, which account for an increasingly important part of total revenue.
The market-oriented products include a real-time schedule of events, the O-STA original message service, the web ticker STA-AND, and on-demand photo and video services. The STA also organises round tables and other media events.
