Tipsheet: How To Cover Ocean Issues in Your Newsroom

This is a longer version of a tipsheet that was featured in Covering Climate Now’s Covering Oceans newsletter on January 21, 2025. It includes many recommendations from a recently produced Pulitzer Center report, Making Waves, which looks at the current state of ocean reporting and examines opportunities for better storytelling.

• Highlight the ocean-climate connection: The ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink, and by absorbing excess CO2, it mitigates climate change. But rising greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in acidification, sea-level rise, extreme weather events and other devastating impacts. The ocean is a victim, but also part of the solution, and reporting can reflect both sides of this.
• Don’t think of the ocean as a siloed topic. It should be integrated into wider environmental coverage that weaves together environmental, social, political and human dimensions across all ecosystems. One recent thing that chimed with me was the ocean being one of the common threads across all three major Climate Change Conferences (COPs) last year: biodiversity, climate, and even desertification. 
• Cover wider ocean topics. At the high level are fisheries, climate impacts, biodiversity, and pollution. However, there is a fascinating subset of issues that need more attention: deep-sea mining, marine geoengineering, shipping, governance, the blue economy, and more. There is also a need to balance hope versus doom and gloom—highlight the problems but also focus on solutions, innovations, and community-led conservation efforts. 

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• Make it consistent. Our report Making Waves found that ocean coverage often lacks depth, tends to be reactive rather than proactive, with spikes around specific events (i.e., oil spills). Presenting a good story can start a conversation, but sustained attention has more impact. A good example is the coverage of marine plastic pollution and the resulting public awareness and policy change.
• Cover socioeconomic as well as environmental impacts. The global economy relies on the ocean’s capacity to provide natural resources, food, energy, and employment for millions of people, mostly in the Global South. There is room for more social justice coverage in ocean reporting: the rights of Indigenous communities, benefit-sharing, gender inequality, human rights, and labor abuses.
• Make space for diverse perspectives and underrepresented voices. Don't just recycle the same old experts and narratives. Coastal communities, Indigenous people and grassroots organizations will add a range of experiences and knowledge. Think about how your story can be accessed by communities affected after it’s published.
• Think of local stories, but also whether it fits into wider patterns that may indicate systemic regional or global problems. Is your story part of a wider supply chain that would lead to collaboration with other journalists? Is it a new topic, or can you cover it from a fresh angle? 
• Ocean stories can happen in remote, difficult-to-access locations. Try to avoid “parachute” journalism: Work with local reporting partners (better to use than “fixers”) and help build capacity so that more reporters and newsrooms can cover these issues. 
• Bringing your story back to the impact on consumers is a good way to compete within a busy news agenda. The work of the Outlaw Ocean Project has highlighted the true cost of the squid and prawns eaten by U.S. consumers. Some 80% of Americans surveyed last year agreed that “if you care about our food supply, you should care about oceans and healthy ocean ecosystems.” In the UK, a Financial Times investigation linked the overexploitation of West African fisheries to supermarket salmon. 
• Use “ocean,” not “oceans.” Experts believe that people will care more if reporting reinforces the notion that the world has “one big ocean with many features. The different parts of the ocean are all part of one interconnected circulation system … that moves energy, matter and organisms around the globe.”
• Use powerful visuals. The most engaging photos build an emotional connection and use fresh and context-relevant imagery. If you can’t use field photography, instead of an abstract stock image of some waves or a beach, try this free database of carefully selected images that meet these criteria. 
• Go to ocean conferences: In addition to local and regional events, 2025 is a busy year for global ocean events: the Economist World Ocean Summit (Japan, March), Our Ocean (South Korea, April), and the U.N. Ocean Conference (France, June) are all excellent opportunities to report, learn, and meet people. Climate and biodiversity COPs also have an ocean stream in their agendas.