PAJ Mourns Janice Budd

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Thursday, January 4th, 2018

janice 1“Journalist and communications professional Janice Budd was one of the hardest-working and most talented people in the business. Her death is a significant loss to the profession, as well as a deeply personal loss to the many people whose lives she touched,” says President of the Press Association of Jamaica Dionne Jackson Miller.
This following Budd’s death Tuesday, after an illness of several months.
“Janice was a joy to work with. She was multi-talented, and moved seamlessly between radio, TV and print, a testament to her core skills of news reporting and writing. She was an exceptionally talented writer, an excellent editor and excelled at almost every task in the newsroom, from radio or TV presenting, to hard news reporting and feature and documentary writing,” added Jackson Miller, who worked with Budd in the RJR Newsroom.

A proud graduate of Westwood High School, Janice’s early career leanings were clear from her participation in her school’s magazine editorial team, so her pursuit of a communications degree at CARIMAC, UWI, would have been no surprise.

During her years in journalism, Janice Budd worked at most of Jamaica’s major media houses, including the Jamaica Information Service, where she began her career and spent three years, and where her duties included anchoring JIS News, and working as Features/Show Creator/Producer and Presenter/ Parliamentary reporter.
She spent a short time as the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation where she produced and presented news, and produced the weekly televised current affairs discussion programme “Perspective” hosted by Cliff Hughes. This was followed by six years at CVM TV where she entered the living rooms of Jamaicans every evening as one of the station’s news anchors, and where she was also a senior editor and reporter for CVM’s prime time news package, “Newswatch.”

janice 2While at CVM, she also produced, hosted and reported for the award-winning investigative news series “Probe.”
Janice spent ten years at RJR/TVJ, where her accomplishments included creating, producing and presenting the award-winning human interest/ current affairs feature programme “On Assignment.” During her final two years at RJR, Janice was the Radio News Editor, after which she left to take up duties at the Observer as Sunday Editor.

Janice won several PAJ awards for journalistic excellence, one of the most recent being the 2011 Carl Wint prize for Human Interest Feature stories; which she shared with Observer feature editor Kimone Thompson. The award was for a series on mental health called ‘Matters of the Mind.’
“Apart from being an excellent journalist, Janice was a generous, loving person who made friends wherever she went,” says PAJ Vice President Karen Madden, who was a close friend.
“She was also, however, an outspoken, feisty, no-nonsense woman who spoke up for what she believed in. She was passionate about issues involving children and the environment, both themes that often figured in her work, and she loved having the opportunity to bring people’s stories to life and to national attention,” Madden added.

In 2013 Janice left journalism to pursue other opportunities at NCB and then at the Shipping Association of Jamaica, but remained a member of the PAJ, and continued to provide the organisation with support and encouragement.
We at the Press Association of Jamaica are terribly saddened by the loss of our friend and colleague, and extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends and colleagues.

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