Profile
Juliet O’Neill is a writer and editor whose journalism career spanned Ottawa, Moscow, London and Washington in postings with the Canadian Press, the Ottawa Citizen and affiliated news services Southam News, Canwest News and Postmedia News.
She served as media officer for Oxfam Canada, the humanitarian aid and development organization, 2011-2013. She was a copy editor 2016-2019 at Canada's National Observer, an online daily news publication focused on energy, climate, politics and social issues.
She is a fast, focussed writer with a background in national and international wire service and online journalism in Canada and abroad. She has more than three decades of experience in news reporting and feature writing from Ottawa and foreign correspondent postings in Washington, Moscow and London. Her stories appeared online at canada.com and in major newspapers across Canada.
Juliet was based in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union, covered the humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, the negotiation of the land mines treaty and the development in 2010 of the maternal and child health initiative for the G8 and G20 summits in Canada.
Key issues in her writing and media work at Oxfam ranged from famine in the Horn of Africa and hunger in the Sahel to land grabs and the plight of Syrian refugees.
She wrote a lively weekly personality interview column called Encounters for the Citizen and has covered many beats, from labour and women’s rights in the 70s to Canada-U.S. free-trade negotiations in the 80s; from conflict in the former USSR in the 90s to federal politics and Canadian foreign policy in recent years.
In October, 2009, she was honoured by the 2009 Charles Lynch Award for outstanding coverage of national affairs, an award chosen by peers in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. She is a 1995-96 alumni of the Southam journalism fellowship at Massey College, University of Toronto. In 2005 she shared a National Newspaper Award nomination with Ottawa Citizen colleagues for a series on anti-terrorism law. She received a 2006 Inspiration Award for a series on mental health care. She was awarded the 2005 Press Freedom Award amid a battle over Canadian secrecy law which led to a landmark legal victory for media rights Oct. 19, 2006.
Awards
- 2009 Charles Lynch Award for Outstanding Coverage of National Affairs
- 2006 Inspiration Award, Royal Ottawa Health Care Foundation
- 2005 World Press Freedom Award
- 2005 National Newspaper Awards Nominee
- 1995-1996 Southam Journalism Fellow
A Journalism Journey
- 2010 - Foreign Affairs writer Postmedia News
- 2009 Sept-Dec Senior Online News Editor, Canada.com, Ottawa
- 06 - 09 Political reporter, Canwest News Service national bureau
- 02 - 06 Senior Writer, Ottawa Citizen
- 96 - 02 Ottawa Citizen/Canwest News Service national bureau
- 95 - 96 Southam Fellow, Massey College, University of Toronto
- 93 - 95 London-based European correspondent Southam News
- 89 - 93 Moscow bureau chief, Southam News
- 83 - 88 Washington, D.C., Canadian Press correspondent
- 75 - 83 Canadian Press reporter, Parliament Hill, Ottawa