"The avalanche, in Washington’s Cascades in February, slid past some trees and rocks, like ocean swells around a ship’s prow. Others it captured and added to its violent load. Somewhere inside, it also carried people.”

These are among the gripping opening sentences of the New York Times’s interactive story Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. The 2012 story of an avalanche that killed five skiers in Washington State, the six-part feature took more than six months to produce and successfully wove together text, graphics, video and photography. It was viewed by more than three million people in the first few weeks after it was published.

The journalist behind Snow Fall, John Branch, won a Pulitzer prize for his engaging account of the incident. The way in which the story was told, a presentation of words and pictures that went beyond a linear format, has seen it become a much-quoted, oft-admired benchmark for digital-age storytelling. Post-Snow Fall, many new mediums are shifting control over to readers and viewers with experimental new formats. News stories, music videos, and even traditional books are all receiving interactive adaptations.