LONDON: As the last two journalists on the iconic Fleet Street left last week, the occasion sparked a wave of nostalgia among reporters and others for an era spanning more than three centuries when the area provided a model for journalism across the English-speaking world, including India.
Located a few minutes’ walk from India House, Fleet Street has long been the metonym for the good, bad and ugly in British journalism since 1702, when London’s first newspaper, Daily Courant, was published from there. History hangs heavy in every part and pub here.
Reflected in films and literature, Fleet Street has reported the first draft of the history of the modern world, including the rise and fall of the British Empire. India featured prominently in its output, even if it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that Indian journalists appeared on the scene.
Mihir Bose, noted writer and sports journalist, was among the first Indians on Fleet Street. “It was a different world. Most editors didn’t know anyone of colour, they were not aware that they could write. It was considered that Indians could not write English well,” he said.
Bose, who wrote for The Sunday Times and other newspapers, said there were no Indians in the newsroom of any leading British newspaper based within a half-mile radius on Fleet Street in the 1970s and 1980s. Other rare Indians at the time were sports writers Dicky Rutnagar and Sukumar Sen and cartoonist Abu Abraham. The main writers on India were those who had returned after reporting the country’s freedom struggle and independence, or prominent journalists such as James Cameron and Ian Jack.
{{/usCountry}}Bose, who wrote for The Sunday Times and other newspapers, said there were no Indians in the newsroom of any leading British newspaper based within a half-mile radius on Fleet Street in the 1970s and 1980s. Other rare Indians at the time were sports writers Dicky Rutnagar and Sukumar Sen and cartoonist Abu Abraham. The main writers on India were those who had returned after reporting the country’s freedom struggle and independence, or prominent journalists such as James Cameron and Ian Jack.
{{/usCountry}}The fortunes of Fleet Street as the centre of British journalism dwindled in the late 1980s, particularly after media magnate Rupert Murdoch took on powerful printers and moved the publication of The Times and The Sun to Wapping. Other newspapers subsequently moved out.
Left behind were memories of an era marked by smoke-filled newsrooms (mostly male dominated), major technological changes (letter press, typewriters, telegraph, hot metal printing) and a culture that saw specific pubs patronised by specific newspapers and category of journalists.
“There was a lot of drinking. Lunch-time drinking was big. Every editor had a bar cabinet in his office. Sub-editors, writers, photographers – each group had its own favourite pub that the other would not visit,” Bose recalled.