Ocean Reporting Network Fellowship 2024 – Global South

Pulitzer Center welcome ambitious proposals on the main ocean threats of climate change; over- and illegal fishing; biodiversity loss and pollution; and the species, ecosystems, and communities that are being impacted. But they also strongly encourage proposals on underreported topics that also deserve attention, such as deep-sea mining; marine energy generation; blue finance and carbon crediting; marine genetic resources and benefit sharing; shipping, marine carbon dioxide removal and ocean geoengineering; aquaculture; marine protected areas (creation, implementation, and management); polar issues; fishmeal production; and more.

The Ocean Reporting Network, or ORN, is a Pulitzer Center initiative designed to facilitate cross-border reporting on illegal fishing, pollution, human rights violations, and other wrongdoings that continue to threaten marine biodiversity and coastal communities. The network will tackle the connections of industrial-scale water contamination to unsustainable supply chains, legal loopholes, and illegal money flows.

The Ocean Reporting Network is part of the Pulitzer Center’s Environmental Unit, which also supports reporting and investigations in the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia regions. It is funded with the Norwegian development aid agency Norad’s support. The Norad grant explicitly guarantees complete editorial independence for the Pulitzer Center and for the Fellows and news organizations participating.

The network will establish a collaborative ecosystem of journalists around the world. Together, they will uncover the harmful and illegal practices of the fishing and extractive industries, systemic threats to marine biodiversity and coastal communities, and the supply chains facilitating global demand for the ocean’s increasingly dwindling resources.

Benefits

• Access to data and documents as well as the opportunity to sharpen your data skills with support from the Pulitzer Center’s Data and Research team.
• Specialized training opportunities such as the use of satellite imagery and other digital tools in investigations, corporate and follow-the-money research, and more.
• The opportunity to work and collaborate with other journalists on stories that transcend your country and region and can achieve true global impact.
• A community of like-minded colleagues that will continue beyond your Fellowship.
• The possibility of renewing your Fellowship for an additional one or two years, based on performance.
• Salaries commensurate with experience.

What they are looking for?

• They want compelling, impactful, innovative, and well-developed story ideas that can be followed over the course of a year—not just a one-off story, or coverage of a general topic.
• Experienced environmental journalists—freelancers or staff—working with local, regional, or international media outlets in online, print, radio, and video format.
• Teams of journalists proposing cross-border collaborations.
• Dedicated team players who will devote a full year to their ocean investigation and publish regularly following a timeline decided together with the Pulitzer Center and their editors.

Eligibility Criteria

• They particularly welcome applications from the Global South, and seek more reporting from Asia-Pacific, east and southern Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa.
• Experienced journalists with a proven track record of investigative or in-depth ocean or environmental reporting.
• Journalists with a solid understanding of ocean issues and the scientific, environmental, social, legal, political, and commercial forces at play—and why these issues matter to the global well-being.
• Staff or freelance journalists working on various platforms, including print, radio, video, and multimedia. Freelance reporters must have the support of a local or international newsroom that agrees to host them and publish the work they produce during the Fellowship.
• Team players with the experience and ability to work collaboratively across newsrooms and borders, and the willingness to learn new skills.
• Reporters who are motivated to participate in outreach activities related to their investigations, such as meetings in communities and visits to schools and universities.

For more information, visit Pulitzer Center.