Hong Kong-based news and picture agency run by two former Fleet Street journalists is celebrating its first anniversary after scoring splash bylines in two UK national newspapers in a fortnight.
Red Door News – an agency launched in June last year by former Sun journalist Simon Parry and ex-Daily Mail writer Hazel Knowles – picked up a splash and spread in the Daily Record 12 days after getting a splash byline in The Sun.
The Record story was an exposé into the living conditions of Chinese workers making clothes for high street stores in the UK.
Parry also shared a byline in The Sun with staff reporter Neil Syson on a story exposing the background of David Beckham’s alleged Malaysian lover Sarah Marbeck. Parry travelled to Kuala Lumpur for The Sun to investigate her past.
For the Daily Record exposé, the married couple used famous names from Coronation Street. They used the pseudonyms Mike Baldwin and Emily Bishop to get into a clothes factory in southern China.
“The only way we could get in was to pose as buyers for a clothing company,” said Knowles. “We needed names we’d remember – and I still watch videos of Coronation Street my dad sends over from England.
She added: “Fortunately Coronation Street hasn’t caught on in southern China yet.”
Parry was deputy news editor on The Sun from 1992 until 1996 before moving to Asia where he news edited the English-language daily the South China Morning Post before setting up his agency.
Red Door News (www.reddoornews.
com) has marked its first anniversary by expanding its pool of photographers who will cover news and feature assignments throughout China and the region
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