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The End of an Era..
Jun. 15th, 2005 10:20 amThe last newspaper has left Fleet Street.
Journalists Bid Farewell to Fleet Street
For those not familiar with the concept, "Fleet Street" was a synonymous with British journalism as "Wall Street" is to American economic might.
Journalists Bid Farewell to Fleet Street
For over 300 years, London's Fleet Street was the heart of British journalism, home to many of the country's leading newspapers — and the pubs that fueled their employees. On Wednesday, however, the industry saluted the end of an era at a ceremony marking the departure of Reuters from its Fleet Street headquarters.
The exodus is the final knell for an era when booze-fueled journalists in the male-dominated publishing world would swap yarns with sources and competitors in the pubs.
"What Fleet Street had was a certain film noir glamour," said Kim Fletcher, editorial director of the Telegraph Group. "Being film noir is slightly seedy, but certainly exciting. It was something of a Runyon-esque society — reporters might still be wearing trench coats and they might still be drinking too much.
"This was not a time when journalists went jogging on their lunch hours."
Papers such as The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror lined Fleet Street in massive buildings. At night, vans clogged the streets to collect the day's papers and begin distribution.
"You were intimately connected to what you were doing," Fletcher said. "The buildings would start to shake when the presses started. It's become much more of a respectable white collar profession today, just because you're disconnected from the industrial muscle of those printing presses."
For those not familiar with the concept, "Fleet Street" was a synonymous with British journalism as "Wall Street" is to American economic might.
