Ben Lowry: My memory of working on Fleet Street and Belfast's equivalent, Donegall Street, which the Irish News has now left

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I began working at News International (owner of The Sun, The News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times) that summer, which was actually based in Wapping, about a mile from Fleet St, to where the News International boss Rupert Murdoch had moved operations a decade previously.

But Fleet St was still then used as a general term for working in newspapers in London, having for more than a century been the epicentre of printed news. The News Letter is very old, having been founded in 1737 (we are now the oldest English language daily title in the world), but the Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper of them all (long since extinct) was launched near Fleet Street 35 years earlier in 1702. By the mid 1990s there were still a handful of newspapers in Fleet Street but they have all since gone.

Donegall Street was Belfast’s Fleet Street. The News Letter was founded nearby, and for many decades its many office was on Donegall St. The Belfast Telegraph was on the same road until a decade ago, as was – until Thursday – the Irish News. Having worked for all three titles, albeit for only a few weeks at the latter before I got work at the Telegraph, I have fond memories of that road and of my time in the newspapers that were located on it.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is editor of the News Letter

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