My friend and former colleague Rona Levin, who has died aged 58, was a forthright and noble show business reporter and PR consultant. A determined journalist and a hard worker, she was also very funny.
Rona was born in New York to Arthur Levin, a pharmacist, and his British wife, Eve, an artist. Eve wanted to move back to the UK, and they settled in Highgate, north London, where Rona attended South Hampstead high school. She studied journalism at the London College of Printing, completing her training with the Reading Chronicle. There she was always a larger-than-life character, and friends remember her tenacity in pursuit of a story and also her great and irrepressible sense of fun.
She then joined the Sky Channel as a press officer, moving to C4 Teletext before rejoining Sky Television as a TV listings editor, and becoming head of PR for Sky News. Later she moved into the newsroom as a forward planning editor and then the show business editor, working alongside Fiona Phillips. In 1992 she joined Teletext as a showbiz reporter and progressed to commissioning writers and developing digital content and services.
Rona was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 27. After its recurrence 13 years later, she became a freelance communications consultant for clients including the Basic Skills Agency, Welsh Assembly and the British Library. Rona had the BRCA gene, which predisposed her to breast and ovarian cancer. She was determined to not let recurrent illness hinder her active life, packing in as much as she could.
Her great news sense and excellent contacts meant that any story she worked on got terrific coverage. Her PR skills won industry recognition: the Xchangeteam’s freelancer of the year award and a PRWeek award for her work on the British Library’s 2007 faith exhibition, Sacred.
Rona continued working for the British Library, and after promoting digital access to the library’s newspaper archives, she pitched an idea for a book that was subsequently commissioned. Drawing on the library’s regional newspaper collections, Comic, Curious and Quirky: News Stories from Centuries Past was published by the British Library in 2014. Rona took no fee and directed all proceeds from the book to Macmillan Cancer Support.
Rona devoted herself to helping others, and in 2009 she was made a trustee of Shape, a charity for disabled and deaf people.
Rona is survived by her husband, Mark, and daughter, Samantha.
