How an Article About an Avalanche Triggered a Journalistic Avalanche
Nestled somewhat away from the tourist crowds, the idyllic resort, with its ten lifts on 1,781-meter-high Cowboy Mountain, is especially popular with locals. On this particular weekend in February 2012, the resort's marketing director, Chris Rudolph, was delighted to welcome some of America's best-known and most accomplished skiers and freeriders, along with several sports journalists. Stevens Pass was showing itself at its very best, and there would be magnificent footage for documentaries, feature stories, and photo blogs. Rudolph hoped that the resulting coverage would generate considerable publicity for the region. And now, to top it all off, the perfect snow had arrived.
"The snow broke through the trees without any warning. There was only a hissing sound in the final second, a white wall two stories high, and Chris Rudolph's blood-curdling scream: 'Avalanche! Elyse!'"
This is how Snow Fall begins, the feature story with which sports reporter John Branch not only won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing on behalf of The New York Times, but also ignited a global debate about the role of images and text in journalism.
At 11:15 a.m. on Sunday, February 19, 2012, sixteen experienced skiers between the ages of 29 and 53 had set out for Tunnel Creek, a backcountry route beyond the official slopes of Stevens Pass on the rear face of Cowboy Mountain. Among them were Elyse Saugstad, professional skier and former winner of the Freeride World Tour; John Stifter and Keith Carlsen, editors and photographers for Powder magazine; Megan Michelson, freeski expert for ESPN.com; and Jim Jack, tournament director and former president of the International Freeskiers Association. The group was led by a local, the aforementioned marketing director Chris Rudolph, who took pride in showing this extraordinary gathering of athletes and ski professionals a very special side of his mountain.
The Disaster Begins at Noon
From the outset, John Branch leaves no doubt in his multimedia feature—published six months later and reconstructing the events at Tunnel Creek—that this was no ordinary ski outing. The disaster begins at noon. At 12:02 p.m., the first emergency call reaches dispatch, seven minutes after the group triggered an avalanche at Tunnel Creek. Six thousand cubic meters of snow break loose and race down the mountain at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour. As it descends, the avalanche sweeps up another 7,000 cubic meters of snow, debris, and trees. Only a few minutes later, carrying a mass of more than fifty tons, it comes to rest 762 meters below. Three people lose their lives, among them Chris Rudolph.The New York Times published the story online on December 20, 2012, and within the first six days it was viewed 3.5 million times by 2.9 million readers. Roughly one-third of those visitors were entirely new users of the website.
Avalanches are, in fact, not unusual events. Since the 1980s, the number of accidents has risen along with the growing popularity of skiing and the boom in adventure sports. Today, around 200 people worldwide die in avalanches every year. Most victims trigger the avalanches themselves, and remarkably often, the victims are experienced backcountry skiers. Tragic as it sounds, from a journalistic perspective, a story about an avalanche accident is not inherently headline-making.
The Future of Journalism
So what captured the attention of so many online readers? Why was this story showered with praise, honors, and awards, culminating in the highest distinction journalism has to offer, the Pulitzer Prize? And why did media experts see in this story the future of journalism and online communication?Part of Snow Fall's success undoubtedly lies in John Branch's meticulous reporting and the painstaking way in which he assembled the facts and details of that February day in 2012. Equally compelling is the sensitive inclusion of the avalanche's survivors, who are given a voice throughout the story. And finally, the clear, vivid language in which the piece is written demonstrates Branch's masterful command of his craft. Yet these are qualities shared by many outstanding feature stories.
What ultimately makes Snow Fall an extraordinary and forward-looking digital story lies not in its text but in its treatment of imagery.
Images Become Information
Working together with a team of graphic designers and multimedia specialists, Branch succeeded in weaving the visual elements of the story into the text in a way journalism had never before seen. While conventional feature stories typically use photographs and visual elements in a supplementary, decorative role—essentially illustrating the text—in Snow Fall, the visual components are elevated to an entirely new level. Branch and his team place image and text on equal footing. Textual information is complemented by visual information, and vice versa.They go even further. Every visual element—whether a photo, a video sequence, or an infographic—has the specific task of providing additional information and thereby advancing the narrative in a meaningful way.
Long before Snow Fall, online editors had experimented with combining text and imagery to take fuller advantage of the internet's new modes of reading and engagement. But no one had achieved such a seamless symbiosis as Branch and his team. Unlike many other digital projects, Snow Fall does not overwhelm the reader with technological gimmicks or distract from the story itself.
Quite the opposite. Branch's multimedia feature stands out for its calm, understated design and its elegant narrative flow, in which multimedia elements sit alongside the text in a harmonious and supportive way. Some critics and admirers of the story have even interpreted the reader's navigation itself as part of the narrative. The parallax scrolling—the slow downward movement through the text—can be understood as an analogy for the skiers' descent or the movement of the avalanche itself.
Like a Skier, the Reader Moves Through the Story
Across six chapters, Snow Fall carries readers on a journey through the events. Like a skier descending a mountain, one moves through the text from top to bottom, carving gently left and right, pausing at photo galleries that, like an album, retrace the lives of the avalanche victims in fast-forward. In the gallery dedicated to Jim Jack, for example, we see a photograph of three-year-old Jim and his father, Norman Jack, sitting on a sled in the snow. Childhood memories that reveal how early Jim Jack's passion for snow had taken hold—a passion that would ultimately cost him his life.Further down in the story, readers encounter short video sequences in which participants and family members speak, introducing the story's protagonists with empathy and emotional depth. Among them is freerider Elyse Saugstad, who had skied the first few meters alongside Chris Rudolph before the avalanche swept them away.
Finally, readers arrive at a series of dynamically animated infographics that vividly and meticulously present the facts and data surrounding the full scale of the disaster. Different colors trace the routes of the individual skiers, since the group had spontaneously divided into teams of two and three during the outing. As one reads the text, one can simultaneously follow the different paths taken by each team. Or watch the avalanche's unstoppable descent, reconstructed in an animated simulation based on research conducted by the Swiss Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research. It is these visual elements that allow the story to unfold in its full power. That was new.
Traditional journalism had long relied primarily on the power of words and entrusted the communication of information to text alone. For the first time, a prestigious institution like The New York Times demonstrated that times had changed—and that the journalism and online communication of the future would look very different indeed.
This text was first published in Visual Storytelling: Visuelles Erzählen in PR and Marketing by Petra Sammer and Ulricke Heppel, O'Reilly Media. More books by Petra Sammer on Storytelling: Go to https://www.petrasammer.com/books/
This text was written by a human; AI tools were used for spelling and grammar checks. Photo by Krzysztof Kowalik on Unsplash
