Staff coverage of the 2025 Salt Lake fireworks explosion also earned recognition in the National Headliners competition.

The Mike Berger Award is conferred by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, whose faculty judges cited the “tenacity” of Civil Beat’s reporting.

Some of the Senate’s most powerful members are protecting their longtime friend. That’s not what the public wants or expects.

Here’s a look at some memorable images from this year, many of them from Civil Beat’s photo storytelling. 

Economic worries, the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history and a chaotic tsunami evacuation kept residents on their toes in 2025. And those weren’t even the most important Hawaiʻi news stories of the year.

It would be too depressing to constantly uncover problems if we didn’t have faith that some of them could be solved.

A clear longing for more local media coverage emerged from our recent survey of Kauaʻi and the Big Island. We intend to meet that need.

A $1.5 million investment from the American Journalism Project will jumpstart our plans to increase neighbor island coverage, part of our shared mission to build a future for local news.

This newsroom has been around for 15 years, the last one with me in charge. Time to take stock of what we’ve been up to lately and where we’re headed.

Help us learn how Hawaiʻi residents deal with increasing temperatures.