User talk:Sarah Onions

Ron Onions was one of the leading lights of commercial radio news and current affairs in Britain in the 1970's and helped to create a new approach to broadcasting, in counterpoint to the BBC for which he had once worked.

Onions was the brains behind the London current affairs radio station LBC (London Broadcasting Company) and its sister, the national commercial radio news service IRN (Independent Radio News).

In place of the BBC's gravitas, he introduced a lighter,jauntier approach to news presentation akin to that of a tabloid newspaper. He was influenced by American broadcasting from his time as the BBC's New York organiser, and introduced the three-minute "snapshot" bulletin in which news was always moving forward, rather than just a summary of recent history. It helped to pave the way for a concept of "rolling news".

Onions employed a talented team of young reporters and, by way of a backhanded compliment, the BBC, along with ITN and Channel 4, was not slow to recruit from the Onions stable of go-getters. Onions launched the careers of the journalists Jon Snow and Peter Allen,engaged Carol Thatcher as a phone-in host and made figures such as Bob Holness, Dickie Arbiter and Douglas Cameron household names. Onions had brisk and exacting standards allied to charm and a quirky good humour. He was adept at coining journalistic mantras such as "good news bad, bad news good". Tough though he could be, he was instinctively kind and considerate and won many friends among his employers.

Ronald Edward Derek Onions was born in 1929 and brought up in modest circumstances in Enfield, northeast London, attending Edmonton County Grammar School. He soon found his vocation in journalism, on the Enfield Gazette and as a sports reporter for the Tottenham Herald.

He and his wife Doris, his childhood sweetheart, moved to the South Coast where he worked for the Brighton Evening Argus. He then joined the BBC. He worked on Tonight with Cliff Michelmore and then was confronted by human tragedy when he was sent to cover the Aberfan disaster in which 116 children died when a colliery waste tip collapsed on to their school in October 1966. For the next few days he worked ceaselessly, snatching odd moments of rest in grim slurry-slimed miners' huts, as he ensured that news of the catastrophe was told properly.

Onions was then sent to the US to fill the BBC's new post of New York news organiser. He organised coverage of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and of the Apollo 11 Moon shot.

He returned to London as the BBC's foreign news organiser but when commercial radio arrived he saw it as a new challenge. First he became newsroom boss of the music station Capital Radio. Then in 1974 he was appointed head of LBC which had suffered a faltering launch. In 1983 Onions was appointed OBE for his services to broadcasting. After LBC, he became Jazz FM's first programme controller. Onions died in 2012 on May the 27th, aged 82. His wife Doris (born Doris Moody) died in 2014. He is survived by his daughter Sarah, also a journalist. A younger daughter Louise predeceased him. With his wife and Sarah he wrote a memoir of his career, the family's travels and the story of Louise. 'Don't Bring Lulu; He Family's Tale of Trial and Triumph' published in 2012.