Four journalists caught up in the National Enquirer's British bloodbath have bagged new jobs.
Last
month, former Sun associate editor Paul Field was sacked as Enquirer
editor and since then most of the 22 British journalists he headhunted
to relaunch the supermarket tabloid have also got their marching orders
— with some facing the prospect of enforced repatriation because of
visa issues.
Field's deputy editor David Gardner, who has been in
the US since 1992, is setting up his own LA-based news agency called
Quest news.
Gardner, a former crime writer and Daily Mail foreign
correspondent, plans to take on staff and continue doing assignments
for the Enquirer.
Meanwhile, the British-owned agency Splash has headhunted two other Enquirer casualties.
The
magazine's former picture editor, Joe Sene, is to work in the rapidly
expanding Splash London office, and its former news editor, Doug
Shields, is to be deputy news editor at the Splash LA office.
Sene was previously with Big Pictures and was picture editor of OK!
magazine before that. Shields worked at The Sun and the Daily Star before becoming news editor at Zoo magazine.
In the past year the Splash London office has taken on three features writers, five photographers and a video journalist.
Splash
founder Kevin Smith said: "Paul Field picked some great operators for
the Enquirer and we were only too happy to jump in and scoop them up."
Lee
Hannon, another British journalist taken on by Field, has been saved a
flight home by being moved to the Enquirer's sister title, Star
magazine.
Nyra Mahmood, a former Sunday Mirror and News of the World reporter, has been axed from the Enquirer's LA office.
According
to one insider, she refused to go quietly. When the head of human
resources asked what she wanted from her desk, she is reputed to have
said that "no-one was going to stop her emptying her own desk" and
brusquely walked past her.
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