Snow Fall

"Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek"
Author	John Branch
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Multimedia feature/Long-form journalism
Publisher	The New York Times
Publication date	2012

"Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek," is a New York Times multimedia feature by reporter John Branch about the 2012 Tunnel Creek avalanche, published on December 20, 2012. The article won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and a Peabody Award. Packaged together as a six-part story interwoven with interactive graphics, animated simulations and aerial video, "Snow Fall" became one of the most talked about online news articles in 2013 and garnered praise and debate over it being an example of "the future of online journalism." The article became highly influential among online journalism circles, with many other publications attempting similar multimedia features and even coined an industry term, "to snowfall."

In a Q&A with New York Times readers published the day after "Snow Fall"’s launch, Branch described how the story evolved beyond a traditional news article. "Credit Joe Sexton, the sports editor, with seeing something bigger," Branch explained. "A couple of days after the avalanche in February, The Times had a front-page article about the recent spate of avalanche deaths, particularly among expert skiers. To most editors, that would have been more than enough. But Joe saw the potential for telling the story in a more powerful, yet narrower, way. And he assigned me the task. The key was the cooperation of those involved. Every one of them opened his or her heart to me, a stranger with only a loose idea of where the story might head. They were honest and gracious and trusting. And when I returned with their stories, and we saw how their various perspectives of the same avalanche wove together, we invited the smart people in our interactive and graphics departments to help with the telling."

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