About us

Funding

We are free from advertisements and rely on donations and grants. We have full editorial independence on our stories and the topics we cover.

The Black Sea was first supported in 2010 by a one-off grant from the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, part of the German Marshall Fund. This allowed us to set up our initial website.

Since our inception, we have regularly been supported by project grants from JournalismFund Europe, IJ4EU (Investigative Journalism for Europe), Reporters in the Field, International Media Support (IMS), and Adessium Foundation.

Our core operations were recently supported by Stichting Veronica and Wallace Global Fund. Currently, we are supported by reader donations and a core funding by the Fred Foundation.

We are registered as Stichting The Black Sea in the Netherlands (KvK no: 87563398).

If you like what we do, you can support our work by donating to us. Each small donation, one-off or monthly, helps us work on underreported stories, hire photographers, commission writers, and do thorough fieldwork.

Awards

2026

Green to Grey was among the winners of the 2026 Sigma Awards, established by the Global Investigative Journalism Network, that "recognizes the best data journalism from around the world."

“The project is an ambitious, technically sophisticated investigation that combines satellite imagery, large-scale geospatial datasets, and AI-assisted analysis to reveal patterns of environmental degradation across Europe. What’s more, the presentation is intuitive and married with strong storytelling and on-the-ground reporting. Sometimes it can be hard to see environmental impacts over time. This project made it easy.”

Winner, Metin Göktepe Journalism Award, Special Jury Prize for the Turkey reporting for Green to Grey. The jury praised our team for "standing out in terms of the use of new approaches and methods in investigative journalism."

The Forever Lobbying Project won First Prize for Excellence in Environmental Journalism at the 2026 Fetisov Journalism Awards.

The Black Sea's investigation The Lost Boat was shortlisted for the True Story Award

The Forever Lobbying Project, European Press Prize nominee for The Innovation Award, 2026.

2025

The Forever Lobbying Project. Helen Darbishire Award 2025, Winner.

"Access Info Europe is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2025 Helen Darbishire Award is The Forever Lobbying Project. This cross-border investigation exposed how the chemical industry lobbied against EU action on PFAS, so-called 'forever chemicals', linked to ongoing environmental and public health risks."

"Led by Le Monde, and supported by 46 journalists across 16 countries and 29 media partners, The Forever Lobbying Project gained access to over 14,000 internal documents. A third of the documents (4,796) were obtained through 184 access to information requests made to public bodies at both EU and national levels across Europe."

The Forever Lobbying Project was a finalist at Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism.

2023

Flax Foundation and Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) awarded our board member and journalist Zeynep Sentek with Emma Goldman Snowball Award for her contribution to social sciences and humanities on subjects of inequality, social justice and feminism - and in recognition of her future potential.

2022

Our documentary Black Trail won the first prize in the Digital Category at Journalism for Sustainability Awards given by Fundação Mestre Casais in Portugal.

2021

Our documentary Black Trail was selected to be screened in the Sustainable Living Film Festival in Turkey.

2018

The Black Sea was nominated for the European Press Prize, in the Investigation Category, for its work on Malta Files: 'How the smallest EU country became a haven for global tax avoidance', in collaboration with the EIC Network.

'Malta Files' was a Finalist for the Tom Renner Prize in the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Awards (USA).

2017

Petrut Calinescu's photo-story on life on the outskirts of Bucharest, showcased on our website, won First Prize in the Balkan Photo Award for the category of Reportage in Photo Story.

The Black Sea was nominated for The British Journalism Awards for Best Investigation of the Year (Global) for its work on Malta Files. Our work on Football Leaks with the EIC Network was nominated in the same category.

The Black Sea journalists won second prize in the EU Migration Media awards for an expose detailing how Syrian Children working for slave wages on farms in Turkey were picking fruit and vegetables destined for western supermarkets.

The Black Sea published with European Investigative Collaborations (EIC.Network) Mapping the route of the Weapons of Terror in the Paris Bataclan Shootings, nominated for the European Press Prize for Investigative Journalism.

2016

The article 'Dutch Rabobank buys up land stolen from Romanian Farmers' was part of a cross-border investigation awarded as runner-up for the European Press Prize for Investigative Journalism.

2015

The feature 'HIV Epidemic sweeps across east Europe as economic crisis threatens' was the winner of the Award for Best Initiatives of European Online Investigative Journalism, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (European University Institute).

Photographer Petrut Calinescu’s work for the site has also been nominated for the Lens Culture Award.

2014

The Black Sea was nominated for the European Press Prize for ‘Innovation’ in media development.

European Investigative Collaborations (eic.network)

The Black Sea was a founding member of European Investigative Collaborations, known as the EIC Network. Today, EIC members include European media outlets, Le Soir (Belgium), Mediapart (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), NRC (Netherlands), Espresso (Italy) and Expresso (Portugal) and others, and have partnered on high-profile investigative journalism projects.

We worked with the EIC Network on the following projects:

• Mapping the Weapons of Terror (2016), a three-month investigation detailing how Brussels’ failure to impose comprehensive directives has facilitated the sale of deadly weapons to terrorists.
• Football Leaks (2016) is a series of articles from the largest leak in sports history, in a project run by over 60 journalists in 14 countries, and
• The Malta Files (2017) exposed the smallest EU country as a haven for tax avoidance for wealthy Russians, the Italian mafia and the Turkish elite.
• Billions for Borders (2018) reveals details of the EU's secretive deal with Turkey to keep refugees out of Europe.
• Toxic Valley (2019) investigates the most heavily industrialised town in Turkey and the role of foreign companies in creating an environmental wasteland.
• Black Trail (2020) A documentary and written investigation into how shipping pollutes the planet, avoids taxes, dodges regulations, & gets away with it.

The Black Sea regularly collaborates with international media partners on investigations. Our work has been published with the likes of The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Tagesspiegel, De Correspondent, DoR, EU Observer, L'Espresso, Expresso, infoLibre, Correctiv, IRPI, Cumhuriyet, the Toronto Star, Balkan Insight and more.