Fleet Street - Contemporary Fleet Street

Contemporary Fleet Street

Fleet Street is now more associated with the law and its Inns of Court and barristers' chambers, many of which are down alleys and around courtyards off Fleet Street itself, almost all of the newspapers thereabouts having moved east to Wapping and Canary Wharf. The former offices of The Daily Telegraph, drawn upon as a source by Evelyn Waugh in his comic novel Scoop, are now the London headquarters of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. C. Hoare & Co, England's oldest privately owned bank, has had its place of business here since 1690. An informal measure of City takeover business employed by financial editors is the number of taxis waiting outside such law firms as Freshfields at 11pm: a long line is held to suggest a large number of mergers and acquisitions in progress.

The London office of D.C. Thomson & Co., creator of The Beano, is still based on Fleet Street. The Secretariat of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association is also an important Fleet Street address, at number 17. Since 1995 Fleet Street has been the home of Wentworth Publishing, an independent publisher of newsletters and courses. In 2006 the Press Gazette returned to Fleet Street, albeit only briefly. The Associated Press and The Jewish Chronicle remain close by. The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph have recently returned to the centre of London after having been downriver in Canary Wharf, but have not returned to Fleet Street.

St Bride's Church, just off the eastern end of Fleet Street, remains the London church most associated with the print industry. A plaque in the church records the vigils held for journalists held hostage in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s, including John McCarthy and Terry Anderson. In the adjacent St. Brides Lane is the St Bride Library, specialising in the type and print industry.

Several other news or publishing-related organisations are clustered on or close to Fleet Street. The British Association of Journalists is based at 89 Fleet Street; the Newspaper Society is nearby on St. Andrew Street; KM Group is at 75 Shoe Lane; and at number 76 is the London International Press Centre, home to TradeWinds, the international shipping news magazine, the Cartoonists' Club, and the International Broadcasting Convention. Metro International, publishers of the free newspaper Metro, are at 85 Fleet Street, while Meteor Press is at number 17.

Other related businesses near Fleet Street include The Wall Street Journal in Fleet Place, the New Law Journal, the Perseus Books Group, Bowker UK, Motor Cycle News, the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, and the London Press Club.

On the wall of Magpie Alley, off Bouverie Street, is a huge mural depicting the history of newspapers in the area.