The Outlaw Ocean Music Project Wins the 2021 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Innovation

Scripps Howard Awards logo

On June 12th, 2022, The Outlaw Ocean Music Project received the 2021 Award for Excellence in Innovation from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

This trailblazing experiment aimed to solve one of the daunting puzzles for the future of journalism, how to reach and engage young people.”

— 69th Scripps Howard Awards

WASHINGTON DC, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES, June 13, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- At the 69th Scripps Howard Awards, presenters announced that Ian Urbina's initiative, The Outlaw Ocean Music Project was the winner of the 2021 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Innovation. Ian Urbina is the founder and

director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit news organization based in Washington D.C. that covers human rights and environmental crimes at sea globally.

This is a particularly notable honor since competition for this award is fierce, and the Scripps Howard Foundation is among the largest and most prominent organizations supporting journalism today.

About the music project judges said: "This trailblazing experiment aimed to solve one of the daunting puzzles for the future of journalism, how to reach and engage young people." One judge added: "The collaboration between two kinds of storytellers – journalists and musicians – touched my soul and pulled at my spirit."

Urbina commented on the award: “We have always been extremely proud of The Outlaw Ocean Music Project.”

More than 415 musicians from over 50 countries have already published albums in classical, rap, electronic, reggae and jazz using sound from The Outlaw Ocean Project reporting and imagery from the stories.

According to Urbina, the goal of the project has always been to recruit the help of hundreds of musicians around the world to disseminate pivotal journalism to a bigger audience. That objective has three parts: 1) reach a different audience (especially younger and non-English) 2) reach this audience in a different way (especially more emotionally) 3) reach this audience using different platforms (especially non-traditional news platforms like Spotify or other non-news hubs).

“The larger proof of concept here is that art -- whether murals, animations, stage performance, stop-motion, graphic novels, or music -- can greatly help journalism diversify and expand its impact,” Urbina said.

The 2021 Scripps Howard Awards winners were selected from 800 entries across 15 categories.

As part of the award ceremony, you can see a video that the Scripps Howard Foundation made about The Outlaw Ocean Music Project.


About The Outlaw Ocean Project:

The Outlaw Ocean Project is a non-profit journalism organization that produces investigative stories about human rights and environmental concerns on the two-thirds of the planet covered by water.

One of the limitations of the traditional model used especially by legacy news outlets, is that worthy investigative stories are typically seen by only a small fraction of the public because these stories get published in just one outlet and typically in just one language. Part of what The Outlaw Ocean Project seeks to do is not just produce polished narrative investigative journalism but also amplify that journalism by converting it into other mediums to reach new audiences.