Jam Press

About Jam Press

Jam Press is a London-based news agency that has become one of the most prolific suppliers of viral news stories to the British and international press. Founded by two former Daily Mail journalists, the agency specialises in sourcing, creating and distributing hundreds of entertainment, lifestyle and human interest stories every week, built around eye-catching headlines and compelling images and video designed to be shared. Its stories appear across national newspapers, digital publishers and broadcasters, and its byline has become a familiar sight on the kind of irresistible, conversation-starting content that dominates social media feeds. Described in its own announcements as the fastest growing UK-based news agency, Jam Press represents a distinctly modern model of newsgathering: born in print, raised in digital and fed on social.

The agency's business sits at the intersection of traditional journalism and the creator economy. Rather than covering courts and councils, Jam Press scouts social media for remarkable videos and photographs, clears the rights, interviews the people behind them and packages the result into stories engineered for maximum audience engagement. Its clients include the biggest names in publishing, and its network of content creators around the world provides a steady stream of licensable material. In recent years the company has expanded from pure newswire supply into public relations, performance marketing and digital publishing, building an ecosystem of brands around its core talent for finding stories that readers cannot resist. This profile examines how a young agency turned social media sensations into a thriving news business.

History and Founding

Jam Press was formed around 2016 to 2017 by partners Ben Nicholls and Jody Knowles, who met while working together at the Daily Mail. A company announcement in January 2021 described the agency as having been formed four years earlier, placing its founding in the middle of the last decade. The idea grew directly out of the founders' years of journalistic experience and their understanding of what modern news craves: eye-catching, captivating content that provokes conversation. Both founders brought national newspaper newsroom experience to the venture, with the agency's team drawing on more than twenty years of combined experience in national news.

The agency's early years coincided with the explosion of social video and the growing appetite of digital publishers for shareable content. While traditional agencies competed for the same court cases and press conferences, Jam Press built a different pipeline, working with content creators around the world to license remarkable user-generated material. The model proved successful: by 2021 the agency was hiring full-time editorial staff, including a news and lifestyle editor, and describing itself as the fastest growing UK-based news agency working with the biggest names in publishing. Its young, dynamic team became known for conceiving alluring headlines alongside images that compel readers to click the share button.

What the Agency Does

Jam Press sources, creates and distributes news stories, producing hundreds of items every week for its publishing clients. Its professional team of journalists finds newsworthy content on social media and elsewhere, verifies it, clears permission from the owners, and writes it up as gripping entertainment and lifestyle stories. The agency is best known for producing online entertainment and lifestyle stories that readers find hard to resist: remarkable animal encounters, astonishing personal transformations, bizarre accidents, heartwarming reunions and the full spectrum of human interest material that performs strongly on social platforms.

A distinctive feature of the Jam Press model is its relationship with content creators. The agency operates a non-exclusive content agreement under which creators submit videos and photographs, granting Jam Press and its partners permission to distribute, broadcast or republish the content in exchange for a 30 per cent share of the fee payable after publication. This gives ordinary people with viral material a route to monetisation while giving the agency a global network of contributors. The agency handles the verification, rights clearance and editorial packaging, ensuring that publishers receive content that is legally cleared for use across broadcast, print and digital media with the biggest publishers in the world.

Ownership and Organization

Jam Press is a privately owned independent agency led by its founders. Ben Nicholls is the founder and the public face of the business, quoted in company announcements and industry coverage as the entrepreneur driving its expansion, while Jody Knowles co-founded the agency alongside him. The company operates from London and has built a young, dynamic editorial team, adding roles such as a full-time news and lifestyle editor as the business grew in 2021. The founders' background at the Daily Mail shaped the agency's news sense and its understanding of tabloid and digital storytelling.

The Jam Press ecosystem has expanded to include related ventures. In July 2025 Nicholls established JamPrime, a performance-led PR and brand growth agency offering a unified model integrating public relations, social media reach and search engine optimisation for founders, creators and tech-driven brands. In March 2026 Jam Press launched Creatorzine, a digital magazine dedicated to the creator economy and internet culture, published at creatorzine.com. These ventures sit alongside the core newswire, reflecting an ambition to build a wider media group connecting creators directly with the news industry.

Client Base and Distribution

Jam Press supplies content to national newspapers, digital publishers and broadcasters, and describes itself as working with the biggest names in publishing. Its stories are distributed through the Jam Press news wire to a client base spanning the UK national press and international outlets. The agency's byline appears regularly on major digital publishers: the independent news site indy100, for example, carries a dedicated Jam Press content feed featuring the agency's stories on everything from rare deep-sea creatures to viral travel dramas, illustrating the breadth of material the agency supplies.

The agency's distribution model is built for the digital age. Stories are packaged with cleared images and video, ready for immediate publication across print, broadcast and online platforms. The agency's expansion into public relations in 2021 added a client-services dimension, offering PR services to brands and individuals seeking coverage. Creators featured through the agency's newer publishing ventures, such as Creatorzine, can have their stories considered for distribution through the Jam Press news wire, creating a pipeline from creator discovery to mainstream media publication.

Coverage Strengths

The agency's defining strength is viral entertainment and lifestyle journalism. Its journalists have a talent for conceiving the most alluring headlines alongside images that compel individuals to click the coveted share button, and its output is engineered for the social media age: surprising, emotional, visual and instantly understandable. The agency's stories range from astonishing animal behaviour and medical marvels to travel chaos, quirky world records and extraordinary personal stories, all selected for their ability to provoke conversation and sharing.

Rights clearance is a second core strength. By building direct relationships with content creators and operating a clear non-exclusive licensing framework, the agency solves one of the hardest problems in viral news: obtaining legally sound permission to publish user-generated content. Its verification process, which includes confirming ownership and clearing rights before distribution, gives publishers confidence that the remarkable video on their homepage will not generate a copyright dispute. The agency's global creator network means its sourcing is not limited to the UK, giving it access to viral material from around the world.

Digital and Technology

Jam Press is a digital-native agency whose entire business model depends on social media platforms as both a source of raw material and a distribution channel for finished stories. Its journalists monitor social networks for emerging viral content, and its stories are written and packaged for maximum performance on search engines and social feeds. The agency's website, jampress.co.uk, serves as its corporate home and hosts its content agreements and submission systems, while its newer publishing venture Creatorzine operates as a standalone digital magazine at creatorzine.com covering influencers, digital entrepreneurs, viral trends and the business of online content creation.

The agency has embraced the creator economy as a structural feature of its business rather than merely a source of stories. The launch of Creatorzine in March 2026 was presented as part of a wider ecosystem built by Jam Press connecting creators directly to the media industry, with featured creators able to have their stories considered for wire distribution. The JamPrime venture extends the model into performance marketing, integrating PR with social amplification and SEO authority. This digital-first architecture, from creator submission portals to wire distribution to owned publishing brands, positions Jam Press as a technology-enabled content business as much as a traditional news agency.

Notable Stories and Impact

Jam Press stories have become a staple of the British digital press, with the agency's byline appearing on hundreds of widely shared articles. Its output includes the full catalogue of modern viral news: families taking children out of school for extended travel, medical oddities and miraculous recoveries, extraordinary animal encounters from six-foot deep-sea fish to crocodile attacks, UFO sightings, travel dramas and the personal stories of influencers and ordinary people living remarkable lives. Media industry analysis has described the agency as a very modern newswire that makes its money finding and licensing grabby content from social media, turning social media sensations into headlines.

The agency's impact extends beyond individual stories to the economics of digital publishing. By industrialising the sourcing, clearance and packaging of viral content, Jam Press created a reliable supply chain for the shareable stories that drive traffic for digital publishers. Its creator payment model, offering contributors a share of licensing fees, has given thousands of ordinary people a way to monetise viral moments. The agency's expansion into PR and publishing demonstrates how a newswire business can evolve into a broader media group serving the creator economy.

Industry Role

Jam Press occupies a distinctive position in the UK news agency sector as the leading exponent of the viral content wire model. Where the traditional agencies compete on speed and comprehensiveness in hard news, Jam Press competes on shareability, supplying the entertainment and lifestyle content that fills the most-read lists of digital publishers. Its success has demonstrated that there is a substantial commercial market for professionally sourced and legally cleared user-generated content, and its model has influenced how other agencies and publishers approach social media sourcing.

The agency also plays a role in professionalising the relationship between creators and the media. Its standardised content agreements and revenue-share terms give creators a transparent framework for licensing their material, an improvement on the informal and sometimes exploitative practices that characterised the early days of viral video licensing. Through Creatorzine, the agency has positioned itself as a chronicler of the creator economy itself, documenting the shift toward careers built on online audiences and telling the stories behind the people shaping internet culture.

Recent Developments

The agency's recent trajectory has been one of diversification. In January 2021 Jam Press hired a full-time news and lifestyle editor and announced an expansion of the PR side of its business with new services for clients, marking its move beyond pure newswire supply into client services. In July 2025 founder Ben Nicholls launched JamPrime, a performance-led PR and brand growth agency built around a unified growth model integrating public relations, social media reach and SEO, aimed at founders, creators and tech-driven brands seeking measurable business outcomes rather than mere coverage.

In March 2026 Jam Press launched Creatorzine, a new digital magazine focused on the fast-growing creator economy and internet culture, covering influencers, digital entrepreneurs, viral trends and the business of online content creation at a time when analysts estimated the sector to be worth more than 200 billion dollars globally. The launch was presented as part of the wider Jam Press ecosystem connecting creators directly to the media industry. Together, these ventures show an agency evolving from a supplier of viral stories into a multi-brand media group serving creators, brands and publishers across the creator economy.