QUITTING COAL
Five countries. 162 video clips. Europe's coal reckoning.
Finalist · Polsko-Niemiecka Nagroda Dziennikarska im. Tadeusza Mazowieckiego 2023
Outriders
A MULTIMEDIA MINE ACROSS FIVE COUNTRIES
Europe aimed to say goodbye to coal. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. The gas ran short. Electricity demand surged. Governments that had made promises turned back toward the mine.
We travelled across five European coal regions to document what it actually looks like when an industry that shaped generations tries — or fails — to close. The UK, Spain, Poland, Germany, Ukraine. Each country in a different phase of the same reckoning.
The result: a 162-video multimedia investigation published by Outriders in 2020. Not a report. A descent.
"THE DUMPS, THE ACCIDENTS, THE DEAD AND THE SICK FROM PNEUMOSILICOSIS HAVE REMAINED HERE SO THAT THIS COUNTRY COULD DEVELOP."— Aníbal Vázquez, former President of the Principality of Asturias
THE PEOPLE INSIDE
What coal looks like from underground.
"Слава Труду" — Glory to Labour. Donbas, Ukraine.
"I DON'T THINK IT'LL LAST FOR MANY YEARS."— Denys Kazanskyj, journalist, Donbas — speaking about the mines in 2021. A year later, fighting reached Zołote, Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk — places we had visited.
BUILT FOR THE MINE SHAFT — AND THE POCKET
The piece was built as a multimedia immersive experience — 162 video clips embedded throughout a longform text, designed to be read and watched in sequence. An additional mobile story version was produced in vertical format.
A NOTE ON DONBAS
The mines we visited in Ukraine were in territories that became frontlines in 2022. Zołote, Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk — the locations featured in our reporting — fell under Russian occupation or sustained assault months after this investigation was published.
The photography from Ukraine in this piece was shot by Evgeniy Maloletka, who documented the 2022 siege of Mariupol and won the World Press Photo of the Year for that work.