The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 10 letter word TYPESETTER
I've seen this crossword clue in The Daily Telegraph
T
Y
P
E
S
E
T
T
E
R
More clues leading to the result TYPESETTER
- Press employee – sort seen with gun dog
- Press employee, a kind person such as myself
- Leader in Times, see, pretty embarrassing for worker on newspaper
- Kind person like Vlad once a Guardian worker?
- Printing machine of sort used by Wanderer?
- Old printer is kind to me
- Press employee temporarily on vacation to exercise dog
- Printer’s kind dog
- Pretty tense, in a mess without new compositor
- One in the printing trade yet to be embarrassed about page on the Sun?
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "Old Fleet Street operative" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case old fleet street operative = typesetter.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does TYPESETTER mean?
TYPESETTER noun- A person who sets type; an employee in a printshop who manually selected pieces of movable type and assembled them for printing.
- A machine that combines type in the correct order for printing.