The Marie Celeste of Canary Wharf
I've often wondered what the Marie Celeste must have felt like, and today I came as close as I'm ever likely to ... in the Canary Wharf offices of the Daily Telegraph which almost all the staff have now vacated for Victoria.
I go there every couple of weeks to write new obituaries of policitians or to update the existing stock, and have been doing since 1995. (My connection with the Telegraph actually goes back to 1967, but more of that later). Usually when I have taken up my terminal at the obituaries desk on the 12th floor, there have been up to 200 people working in the open-plan layout on the same level; only first thing in the morning has it ever been quiet.
But today it had the feeling of a campaign headquarters two days after the election. There were at most eight people at work on the 12th floor: three on obituaries, three in the cuttings library, a picture librarian and a sub-editor. One well-known business journalist did come in, only to find his office locked despite assurances that it wouldn't be. He left in a cloud of expletives. Everyone else has already decamped to Victoria.
It was a strange atmosphere to work in. Bookcases stood empty. Papers for future use were packed away in orange crates. The editor's and other executives' offices stood empty. Photocopiers had disappeared. Scraps of paper, old photos and the odd file of cuttings littered row after row of empty desks, most still with their computer terminals. The odd phone rang, never to be answered. In the canteen, piles of food awaited staff who would now never come.
It all seemed much more final and poignant, strangely, than on the two previous occasions the Telegraph has moved its headquarters during my time with the paper. Back in 1987 when we forsook the Fleet Street offices which now house a merchant bank to be among the first occupants of South Quay on the Isle of Dogs, I was working for the Telegraph at the House of Commons and really only went to Fleet Street at the weekend and for the occasional editorial conference ... a practice, astonishingly, that had only been initiated by Max Hastings the previous year after decades in which the paper just "happened". To me, the Fleet Street offices had always seemed rather squalid. After 20 years' sporadic service with the paper, I was happy to let it go.
By the time the paper moved on from South Quay to Canary Wharf in the early 1990s, I was working for a rival chain. I was affected less by the move than the subsequent IRA bomb which did immense damage to the entire South Quay complex, and would have killed far more than two people had the Telegraph still been there. My lasting memory of that building, ironically, is of looking across to Canary Wharf and wondering how I, as an acute sufferer from vertigo, would ever be able to work there.
Now the Telegraph is on the move again, and the near-desolation of Canary Wharf today is something I shall long remember, whatever impression Victoria makes on me. It will be a peculiar sensation seeimg it for the first time as a newspaper office, as I used to visit the Victoria building wearing my reporter's hat when it was the headquarters of Eurotunnel some 15 years ago. Eurotunnel, ironically, moved down to Canary Wharf before deciding they didn't need a corporate HQ.
On reflection, something else has struck me. Until the 1980s, newspaper offices always contained the presses on which the paper was printed, and the roar of the presses was their lifeblood. When the Telegraph left Fleet Street, the two functions were separated, though initially only by 400 yards. Ever since, newspaper offices have struggled to retain the atmosphere that kept them apart from all other hives of clerical activity. I find it hard to imagine that the digital age will bring that atmosphere back.
I go there every couple of weeks to write new obituaries of policitians or to update the existing stock, and have been doing since 1995. (My connection with the Telegraph actually goes back to 1967, but more of that later). Usually when I have taken up my terminal at the obituaries desk on the 12th floor, there have been up to 200 people working in the open-plan layout on the same level; only first thing in the morning has it ever been quiet.
But today it had the feeling of a campaign headquarters two days after the election. There were at most eight people at work on the 12th floor: three on obituaries, three in the cuttings library, a picture librarian and a sub-editor. One well-known business journalist did come in, only to find his office locked despite assurances that it wouldn't be. He left in a cloud of expletives. Everyone else has already decamped to Victoria.
It was a strange atmosphere to work in. Bookcases stood empty. Papers for future use were packed away in orange crates. The editor's and other executives' offices stood empty. Photocopiers had disappeared. Scraps of paper, old photos and the odd file of cuttings littered row after row of empty desks, most still with their computer terminals. The odd phone rang, never to be answered. In the canteen, piles of food awaited staff who would now never come.
It all seemed much more final and poignant, strangely, than on the two previous occasions the Telegraph has moved its headquarters during my time with the paper. Back in 1987 when we forsook the Fleet Street offices which now house a merchant bank to be among the first occupants of South Quay on the Isle of Dogs, I was working for the Telegraph at the House of Commons and really only went to Fleet Street at the weekend and for the occasional editorial conference ... a practice, astonishingly, that had only been initiated by Max Hastings the previous year after decades in which the paper just "happened". To me, the Fleet Street offices had always seemed rather squalid. After 20 years' sporadic service with the paper, I was happy to let it go.
By the time the paper moved on from South Quay to Canary Wharf in the early 1990s, I was working for a rival chain. I was affected less by the move than the subsequent IRA bomb which did immense damage to the entire South Quay complex, and would have killed far more than two people had the Telegraph still been there. My lasting memory of that building, ironically, is of looking across to Canary Wharf and wondering how I, as an acute sufferer from vertigo, would ever be able to work there.
Now the Telegraph is on the move again, and the near-desolation of Canary Wharf today is something I shall long remember, whatever impression Victoria makes on me. It will be a peculiar sensation seeimg it for the first time as a newspaper office, as I used to visit the Victoria building wearing my reporter's hat when it was the headquarters of Eurotunnel some 15 years ago. Eurotunnel, ironically, moved down to Canary Wharf before deciding they didn't need a corporate HQ.
On reflection, something else has struck me. Until the 1980s, newspaper offices always contained the presses on which the paper was printed, and the roar of the presses was their lifeblood. When the Telegraph left Fleet Street, the two functions were separated, though initially only by 400 yards. Ever since, newspaper offices have struggled to retain the atmosphere that kept them apart from all other hives of clerical activity. I find it hard to imagine that the digital age will bring that atmosphere back.
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