End of an era for British journalism as “sanitised” Fleet Street loses its last newspaper journalists
Today marks the end of an era for British journalism, with the last two Fleet Street-based reporters working their last day in what was once the home of the industry.
Gavin Sherriff and Darryl Smith are to leave Fleet Street today as the Dundee-based Sunday Post closes its London bureau.
This is the building the Sunday Post is currently based in on Fleet Street (Source: Getty)
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Although there are still signs of its newspaper legacy – plaques commemorating legendary journalists, old newspaper signs and… pubs – the street is now filled with coffee shops and financial services workers.
Sherriff has worked on Fleet Street for 32 years, after first joining the newspaper as an editorial assistant.
He told City A.M. the so-called Street of Shame has been transformed from a place of pub lunches and smoke-filled rooms to a more “sanitised” area.
“There are lots of bankers and accountants and people like that. A lot of pubs have gone and been replaced by sandwich bars – there can’t be a place in Britain that’s got more sandwich bars per square metre than Fleet Street,” he said.
“It’s astonishing – the Pret a Mangers, Starbucks, whatever else – people eating healthy salads rather than going for a pint and a plate of chips for lunchtime. So it has changed.”
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Daily Express journalists working on Fleet Street in 1935 (Source: Getty)
Paul Connew, a former Sunday Mirror editor turned media commentator, described it as a “sad day, but an inevitable one”.
He added: “It’s rather odd to think it’s the Sunday Post, based in Dundee, that was the last survivor and now the final sentence in the final chapter of Fleet Street as it legendarily was.”
Evening Standard newspapers in 1955 (Source: Getty)