If the ravens ever leave the Tower of London the kingdom will fall, the story goes.
Nine of the black birds can be found living in the precincts of the castle their wings clipped as a precaution against a sudden dash for freedom.
Landmarks come and go. Just ask shipbuilders of the Clyde, South Wales miners and East Midlands hand loom weavers. First they look permanent then they fall.
In the Black Country, an unexpected landmark has fallen. The Express & Star newspaper has left its 1.75 acre city centre Queen Street offices in Wolverhampton and moved remaining staff into smaller quarters in the nearby Mander centre.
Once, the Express & Star building dominated the city centre. The largest regional paper outside London the paper's illuminated logo proudly displayed on the cityscape and on the Castle Street walkway that connected the sprawling site.
In its pomp, the Express & Star sold more than 200,000 copies a day. It sent a reporter to Afghanistan when the Russians invaded in 1979. It sent a reporter and photographer when the British Army went into Basra in 2003. A young Boris Johnson was sent on work experience to Queen Street. He failed to measure up. He was sent back with a recommendation that he'd never make a reporter. It sent a reporter to every council meeting.
Today the title sells barely 13,000 and has been sold by the family-run Midland News Association to the National World chain.
It had a chance and it blew it. A senior executive once dismissed the internet as 'a fad like CB Radio.'
Friends who still worked in the Queen Street head office shared sombre last thoughts on Facebook as the last shift there came to an end. I know some of them. They are good people.
'This is shit'
For me it was mixed feelings. I only ever went to Queen Street to be bollocked. It's newsroom ran through a culture of fear. A colleague who started in a district office remembered sending a story electronically and having it returned from a news editor with the words 'This is shit.'
After careful review he re-sent the story.
'Still shit,' came the anonymous reply followed by a more personal dressing down over the internal phone.
This sink or swim approach created two career paths. The first path left journalism with dreams shattered. The second created effective reporters who could dictate a front page lead in nine minutes from court, council or roadside car crash. No, sorry, not a car crash but a collision between vehicles. This legally neutral terms was used to avoid apportioning blame.
Thinking back, my finest hour was also my darkest hour. The Lee Hughes trial at Coventry Crown Court saw me and a colleague file rolling copy for six days. Rolling copy? Dictating a fresh story practically every half hour for First edition, Staffs, Town, Dudley, Sandwell and finally the City edition.
'Miss anything and you are dead,' was the inspiring message passed down the chain of command.
So, for me, the sale of the Express & Star building is more than the sale of a building. It is the symbolic end of that particular kind of journalism where every council meeting was covered, every court checked and the working man enjoyed his paper in his armchair at the end of a working day.
There are no multiple editions of the Express & Star any more. There is one printed a couple of hours drive away.
The end and also the beginning
The end of Queen Street makes me feel sad. But not as sad as seeing the Express & Star district office I worked in close a few years back.
Black Lake in West Bromwich was the Express & Star print works built in the 1970s with 40-foot high print towers that would shake the building. The editorial office was open plan. When I first worked there there were 12 Express & Star reporters and three photographers. We would run through brick walls for Ken the chief reporter and Dave his deputy. It is the best office I ever worked in and ever will work in.
The enemy? The enemy was the editor in Queen Street not the Evening Mail.
The future of news may be email
Reach plc's head Jim Mullen this month spoke of there being maybe five years of profitability left in print newspapers.
What the future of local journalism may look like could be found in Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. According to this model, the future isn't print its daily emails and a paid for bonus email funded by subscribers.
Those who worked on newspapers have one skill in their back pocket that I'm convinced will be an asset in a future landscape scorched by the internet and AI. The ability to tell a story is just as important today as it was when the presses rolled in Queen Street.
That's worth a front page lead.
Picture: Rcsprinter123 used under a creative commons licence.
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