The Pulitzer Center, a nonprofit organization that supports independent global journalism, is now accepting applications for a new reporting initiative focused on ocean health and fisheries. This new initiative is designed to support freelance and staff journalists around the world pursuing in-depth reporting projects on critical ocean and fisheries issues.
The initiative seeks to support ambitious reporting projects that expose long-standing fisheries challenges while helping stakeholders and the public better understand solutions that promote sustainable fisheries, ethical supply chains, food security, and resilient coastal communities. Through the grant, the Pulitzer Center hopes to build a global network of journalists dedicated to uncovering underreported stories about oceans and fisheries.
The Center has previously supported investigative reporting projects examining climate change, environmental degradation, crime, conflict, and community resilience across the world’s oceans. The new grant expands these efforts by providing journalists with resources to pursue impactful stories that may otherwise be difficult to report due to the remote and often inaccessible nature of ocean-related issues.
The Pulitzer Center is particularly interested in proposals covering illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, fisheries subsidies, overfishing, depletion of fish stocks, impacts on small-scale fishers, and solutions-oriented reporting. The Center is also encouraging applications focused on climate change impacts, pollution, biodiversity loss, beyond sea-level rise, deep-sea mining, marine energy generation, the blue economy, marine genetic resource, marine protected areas, species and habitat conservation, ocean science, blue carbon, marine geoengineering, shipping, polar issues, fishmeal production, aquaculture, and blue foods.
Transparency and governance are central themes across all focus areas of the grant. The Pulitzer Center is particularly interested in supporting in-depth investigative projects that track financial flows across borders, expose opaque and harmful supply chains, and examine the systems, institutions, and individuals that facilitate corruption.
Applications are particularly encouraged from journalists in the Global South, with a special interest in receiving proposals from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific region, East and Southern Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa. Collaborative reporting projects involving teams of journalists are also welcome.
Applicants will be required to submit a project description of no more than 250 words, a preliminary budget with a basic cost breakdown, and a detailed distribution plan explaining how the reporting will reach audiences. The Pulitzer Center also encourages applicants to include innovative audience engagement strategies, detailed distribution plan, and letters of commitment from media outlets that intend to publish the stories.
The grant programme operates on a rolling basis, and applicants can generally expect to receive a response within one to two weeks after submitting their proposal.
The Pulitzer Center does not fund books, although it may support individual stories that could later become part of a book if they are first published independently by a media outlet. It also does not support feature-length films, staff salaries, equipment purchases, general newsroom operating expenses such as rent and utilities, startup seed funding, routine breaking news coverage, advocacy or marketing campaigns, or data projects intended solely for academic research. However, short documentaries with strong distribution plans may be considered, equipment rentals may be approved on a case-by-case basis, and data-related work is eligible when it directly supports journalism and reporting.
The Ocean and Fisheries Reporting Grant is supported by the Walton Family Fund, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, and the Howard Hughes Department of Science Education.
Interested applicants can apply by clicking here. Click here to read the application guidelines.
For questions, contact reacheditorial@pulitzercenter.org.
