Saturday, 7 June 2014

Fleet Street and the move to Wapping

In the afternoon of Monday 19th May we found out about the recent history of newspapers and that the News of the World closed down in 2011.

Year 6 learnt a lot of fantastic information in the archives about Rupert Murdoch and the printing strike in 1985. Rupert Murdoch fired his workers and moved to Wapping, then all of the newspaper companies left Fleet Street too. Now the only company on Fleet Street which prints newspapers is DC Thompson who published the Beano.

We found out about newspapers in Margaret Thatcher’s time. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 but not everyone agreed with her ways. Some people called her “The Iron Lady” and she was secretly working with Rupert Murdoch. As this history could be hard to understand, we acted out the story. We mimed scenes showing Rupert Murdoch’s battle for media supremacy. We played characters such as Martin Davis, the owner of 20th Century Fox, Johnny Jackson, senior executive of a venture capital fund, and fearless reporter Kate Adie. Some of the children felt nervous but everyone gave it their best and did a fantastic job. It was very amusing and we enjoyed our experience.

Year 6 came back to school with so much new information and understanding of the history of printing!
St Matthew’s CE Primary School

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