Death knell sounds for street of ink

"Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us," rang out the voice of Rupert Murdoch through the journalists' church St Bride's. The irony that it should be the man credited with bringing about the demise of Fleet St when he moved his newspaper empire to Wapping in 1986, who should sound this final death knell on the street of ink, was not lost on those present.

The congregation listening to the reading from Ecclesiasticus Ch 44, Vs 1-15 included Sun editor Rebekah Wade, Times editor Robert Thomson and Daily Mail proprietor Viscount Rothermere. They had gathered at St Bride's for a service to mark the departure of the news agency Reuters from Fleet St after nearly 66 years, to join some of its longer departed fellows in Canary Wharf - the last of the great news organisations to leave the spiritual home of journalism.

The rector of St Bride's, Canon David Meara, who led the service with Rabbi Helen Freeman of the West London Synagogue, said: "The press has seen this occasion in terms of the last rites of the old Fleet St and, in a sense, it is. But, in its disparate, mode Fleet St still looks very much towards us as a spiritual harbour. The evidence is that in a way newspapers value St Bride's more than ever precisely because they have lost that sense of community."

Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, who has just bought the journalists' trade journal Press Gazette and plans to move it to Fleet St, said it was "hilarious" that Murdoch had given the reading.

"I can't wait to hear Murdoch's views on why this is a sad day for Fleet St. This is not the end for Fleet St. I certainly hope with Press Gazette, which in many ways is the Fleet St newspaper, that we can bring it back."

Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer and veteran journalist Alexander Chancellor gave the addresses. Glocer paid tribute to a location that was home to "the best and the worst of British journalism".

He said: "From the 'Street of Shame' that revelled in scandal and gossip, to the street that gloried in the objective search for truth, this part of London has been home to generations of men and women who toiled with their pens and with their brains."

- INDEPENDENT