Newsmen say farewell to Fleet Street

FLEET Street was read the last rites yesterday as the only remaining news journalists based on the road famed for its newspaper industry left their office.

Hundreds of media figures including newspaper proprietors and editors attended a church service to mark the end of an era in the history of journalism.

Fleet Street was once home to the biggest names in the press but over the years newspapers have moved to different locations in the capital.

News agency Reuters, the last remaining organisation to have an office there, is now vacating its premises after 66 years and shifting its 3,000 staff to a new base at Canary Wharf.

Viscount Rothermere, chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns the Daily Mail, was among those who attended the service at St Bride's, the 'journalists' church' in Fleet Street.

Chief executive of Reuters Tom Glocer, who attended the service with his wife Maarit, gave an address. Baroness de Reuter also attended.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation and a former editor at Reuters, gave a reading. It was Mr Murdoch who led the exodus from Fleet Street by moving his printing presses for The Sun and the News of the World to Wapping in 1986. Other newspapers followed suit and their empty offices were soon filled with law firms, accountants and bankers.

The Daily Mail left its premises of New Carmelite House to move to Northcliffe House in Kensington in 1988 after almost 100 years on Fleet Street.

David Meara, canon of St Bride's, said yesterday that the congregation had gathered to commemorate the end of an era. 'This has widely been reported as the last rites of Fleet Street,' he said. 'Fleet Street as a geographical home is now just a deserted village full of ghosts and memories but it remains the generic name for the press everywhere and St Bride's remains the spiritual home for the industry.'

Fleet Street began its association with publishing in 1500 when printer Wynkyn de Worde built London's first printing press next to St Bride's. It became home to Britain's newspaper industry and once bustled with journalists who were notorious for propping up the bars of the street's numerous watering holes.

Reuters first came to London in 1851 but opened in Fleet Street in 1939 just before the Second World War broke out. The agency occupied 85 Fleet Street, a building designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, which was also home to the Press Association news agency until 1995. The firm will sell its headquarters and a neighbouring building for £32.3m.

The only British journalists now left in Fleet Street are a handful who work for Scottish publisher DC Thomson which produces The Beano comic.