Clare Forrester, journalism stalwart, is dead

Journalist Clare Forrester is dead. She passed away on Monday evening in Florida after ailing for sometime.

    
Miss Forrester held communication positions with several national, regional and international organizations. She served as Chief  Press and Public Relations Officer at the Jamaica Information Service, Director of  Communication at the Natural Resources and Conservation Department of  the Ministry of  Agriculture and General Secretary of  the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ).

   
On demitting office as PAJ Secretary in 1997, she was made a Life Member and was given the Distinguished Service Award in 2000.

   
In 2012 she was inducted into the Association’s Hall of  Fame.

Extensive resume

 

Clare Forrester distinguished herself as a sports writer, a field dominated in the Caribbean by male journalists. In that capacity she covered many regional and international games, including the Olympic Games in, Atlanta, Athens, Beijing and London 2012. She also covered the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg Sweden, in addition to several indoor track and field games and the World Junior Championships in 2005.

Forrester also wrote and co-authored several publications and articles on sports and health including the sole authorised biography of sprinter Merlene Ottey and the 2011 commemorative publication on Jamaica’s annual sportsman and woman of the year awardees.

She also shared her perspective on a range of issues as a newspaper columnist and served as a member of the Board of Management for the Institute of Sports.

As part of her service to the PAJ, Clare Forrester administered the National Press Awards for 12 continuous years. She was also an adjudicator with the annual Fair Play Journalism Awards.

Forrester was for 20 years the Media and Communication Advisor with the Pan American Health Organization, the Regional Office of the World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO).

She was a founding member, general secretary and consultant to the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), which in 2002 presented her with a distinguished service award for her contribution to the development of Caribbean journalism.

She also served as a member of the advisory board of Caribbean Intelligence, a Pan-Caribbean on-line news service and administered the annual Caribbean Awards for Excellence in Health Journalism and production of a weekly radio programme on nutrition aired region-wide.

Following her retirement from PAHO/WHO, Ms Forrester became an adjunct lecturer in health and sports journalism at the  Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), University of the West Indies.

In 2011 she joined the office of the CARICOM Special Representative on Haiti (OSPR/Haiti) based in Jamaica and subsequently became a consultant with Heisconsults.

Ms Forrester earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of the West Indies, a certificate in health information and management science from the Keel University in Staffordshire, UK and a teacher-training diploma from the Shortwood Teachers College.