The Washington Post has won the Innovative Storytelling Award from the National Press Foundation for an animated reconstruction of how climate change fueled the destruction of Berry Creek, California.
The winning journalists accepted the award at the National Press Foundation’s annual awards ceremony, in Washington D.C. on May 4, 2022.
The northern California town of 1,200 people burned to the ground in 2020, killing 15 people. An innovative timeline showed how record heat waves in August and September, unusually low nighttime humidity, relentless winds and “thirsty air” and then a fusillade of thousands of lightning strikes led to an inferno.
The winning team of Washington Post climate reporters and visual journalists was graphics editor Monica Ulmanu; senior editor for visual enterprise Ann Gerhart; foreign photo editor Olivier Laurent; climate and science reporter Sarah Kaplan; graphic editor John Muyskens, graphic reporter Chris Alcantara, and Andrew Freedman. Freedman is now a climate and energy reporter at Axios.
The journalists stitched together drone footage, satellite images and weather and wildfire data from the National Interagency Fire Center, and then used mapping software, advanced coding libraries and custom scripts to create stunning animated maps. National Press Foundation judges noted that tools, technology, visualizations and videos were presented seamlessly in ways that simplified a complex story and made it more compelling. Judges also praised the work as a model of collaborative journalism.
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 19: NPF award winners, from left, Ann Gerhart, Olivier Laurent, Monica Ulmanu, John Muyskens, and Sarah Kaplan, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
The Innovative Storytelling Award was created in 2015 to recognize digital journalism of the highest quality that re-invents the way stories are told. Judges take into consideration originality, how re-imagined delivery vehicles enhanced the audience’s understanding of the underlying journalism, and creativity in applying tools or technologies. The 2020 winners were Hiroko Tabuchi and Jonah Kessel of the New York Times.
