Last news giant quits Fleet Street
By CNN's Mallika Kapur
 |  Last to leave: Reuters' move from its HQ at 85 Fleet Street marks the passing of an era. |
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 Fleet Street will never be the same again as last news giant moves out. CNN's Mallika Kapur reports.
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LONDON, England (CNN) -- It's the end of an era for Reuters.
After 66 years at 85 Fleet Street, an iconic building designed by Edwin Lutyens, the company is moving out -- the last major news organization to desert the area of London synonymous with hundreds of years of journalism.
The international news agency's new offices are in a spanking new building in Canary Wharf, in London's Docklands development.
"Clearly it's a sad day that we are leaving Fleet Street," says Reuters' Group Property Director Peter Copley. "But news has no longer been produced on Fleet Street for a number of years, and that includes Reuters. So the news connection is very much a historic fact."
The exodus began in 1985 when Rupert Murdoch took on the UK print unions by moving his News International operations -- publishers of the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World -- to Wapping in East London.
"All the newspapers have left," says veteran Fleet Street journalist Jim Allan. "Express, Telegraph. Reuters is now going... Mail and Mirror, Times, they've all gone."
Where Reuters was, UBS will be. The Telegraph's old building is now the offices of Goldman Sachs.
Allan, who started his journalism career on Fleet Street as an office boy for the UK's Press Association and went on to be news editor of the Daily Telegraph, says the street is not what it used to be.
He talks as he takes me on a walk down the London thoroughfare built over the old Fleet river that became a byword for the heyday of print journalism.
"This road here, used to be full of newsprint lorries, delivering bales of paper to the Express, and to the back of the Telegraph."
One piece of history that hasn't been replaced are the watering holes -- traditional English pubs, still sometimes packed but no longer with journalists.
Says Allan: "Lunchtimes, evenings. If you were on the late shift, you'd go to the pub, telling the night editor where you'd be.
 Nostalgia: Former Daily Telegraph news editor Jim Allan says he will never forget the old days. | |
"If you were needed, he'd call you -- hopefully before you were inebriated!"
I asked Allan how often he and his colleagues would you come here in the old days.
"Oh, twice a day!"
That's where journalists went to talk about stories... scandals ... and other things making news on what was dubbed the "street of shame."
Walking down Fleet Street 45 years after he first came here, Allan is nostalgic.
"I spent the best part of my life here and it was a great part of my life, one you never forget and one I'm grateful for," he says.
