The New York Times Accepts Innovative Storytelling Award

Malika Khurana of The New York Times accepted the National Press Foundation's Innovative Storytelling Award at NPF's Awards Dinner on Feb. 20, 2025. The New York Times won the award for its hour-by-hour reconstruction of the Lahaina fire on Maui. The feature was created by Mike Baker, Malika Khurana, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Riley Mellen, Natalie Reneau, Bedel Saget, Elena Shao, Anjali Singhvi and Charlie Smart. To create “Inside the Deadly Maui Inferno, Hour-by-Hour,” the Times obtained videos from survivors and social media posts to reconstruct the timeline of the wildfire’s path. Reporters used metadata to identify the time and location of each video and then placed each video on a 3-D map . NPF judges said the story showcased the best of innovative journalism by applying a breadth of technology to create a multi-dimensional digital story that carefully explained in acute detail how the tragedy unfolded. The Innovative Storytelling Award was created in 2015 to recognize digital journalism of the highest quality that reinvents the way stories are told. Judges take into consideration originality, how delivery vehicles enhanced the audience’s understanding of the underlying journalism and creativity in applying tools or technologies. Recent Innovative Storytelling Award winners include The Washington Post team behind the series showing the bodily impact of AR-15s and Aleszu Bajak and Ramon Padilla of USA Today in 2022 for a data visualization measuring a decade of growth in congressional partisanship on Twitter. NPF is solely responsible for the content. This video was produced within the Evelyn Y. Davis studios.