Naka Nathaniel

Naka Nathaniel (Kanaka Maoli) is the host of the “Hawaiʻi Radio Hour.” Previously, he was a journalist for The New York Times, based in New York, Paris and Los Angeles. Part of the team that launched NYTimes.com, he later led The Times’s multimedia team that pioneered new approaches to storytelling. His footage of the second plane hitting the South Tower on 9/11 aired on broadcast television networks, and a sequence of the tape was the dominant image on NYTimes.com. While based in Paris, Naka developed a style of mobile journalism that gave him the ability to report from anywhere. Working in more than 50 countries, he covered sex trafficking, maternal mortality and the plight of children in unequal societies. He covered the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was detained while working in Iran, Sudan, Gaza and China. He was nominated for an Emmy for his work in Darfur, and his columns on the Lahaina fires and aftermath won an Indigenous Media Award and a Hawaiʻi Society of Professional Journalists award. He has taught journalism at Emory University and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Naka has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.