Lonely Planet: London: Street of Shame

Fleet Street used to be known as the Street of Shame, but it now seems a shame that a particularly vigorous, if somewhat sordid, occupational enclave has been sidelined by the march of history. Fleet St is where clapped-out printing presses and equally clapped-out journalists filled the nation's newspapers with gossip, opinion, speculation, lies, and, on an especially bad day, an honest story or two. It ranked right up there with Wall St as a street defined solely by the trade conducted on it.
Since the time of Caxton, people have had ink on their fingers in this central part of London. Rupert Murdoch changed all that in the mid 1980s when he introduced state-of-the-art, non-union, printing presses at Wapping in the Docklands redevelopment. The move from Fleet Street was a tumultuous scrum of politicking and picket lines, but it worked. Now all that remains are ghosts, such as El Vino's, the journos No 1 watering hole and main source of inspiration, and The Daily Express building, an Art Deco structure of chrome, glass and nautical curves that was always more dashing than the newspaper itself.

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