Investigating the Outlaw Ocean

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Nearly two-thirds of the planet is covered by water, and much of that space is ungoverned and ungovernable. The world’s oceans include a surprising cast of characters, including vigilante conservationists, wreck thieves, maritime mercenaries, defiant whalers, offshore repo men, sea-bound reproductive rights advocates, clandestine oil dumpers, elusive poachers, abandoned seafarers, and cast-adrift stowaways. This course will immerse students in a largely overlooked realm of the planet that is rich in investigative and narrative opportunity but distinctly difficult to cover. In particular, this class will accomplish two goals: 1) To help you think about a reporting terrain — in this case a watery one — in a new way and specifically with an eye toward mining fresh and viable story ideas from this foreign realm, and 2) To help you look critically at the process of distribution in journalism for the sake of thinking creatively about new ways to transform and disseminate storytelling. This course is tailored to offer training to students broadly interested in journalism, science writing, creative nonfiction and foreign affairs/international reporting. You will receive an immersive experience in how to both develop international works of investigative journalism, and how to get them in front of a global and multilingual audience. Throughout the semester, you will also participate in monthly labs, where you remotely work alongside the Outlaw Ocean Project’s staff on a current ongoing investigation. This will typically involve sifting through documents, combing open-source footage, and establishing supply-chain connections. When the investigation is published, the cohort of students will be cited. In addition to developing the skill of finding viable stories and crafting them as pitches, as well as thinking creatively about new methods of distribution, you will in this class become fluent in science and human rights writing about activities and actors on the high seas.