Alexa Milan '10 won five awards, including three first-place finishes, from the North Carolina Press Association for her work with the Sanford Herald. Samiha Khanna '03 took home a second place honor from the NCPA for a story she wrote with three others for the Indy.
Milan won:
- First place in General News Reporting (with three other Herald reporters) for coverage of the tornado that hit Sanford and other parts of the state in April
- First place in Education Reporting for a series about the impact of potential budget cuts on Lee County schools
- First place in Multimedia Project for a blog about the Lee Regional Fair that featured photo galleries, videos and columns
- Second place in Education Reporting for a feature about the Montessori School of Sanford and its unique curriculum
- Third place in Online Breaking News (with two other Herald reporters) for online coverage of a car chase and manhunt through Lee and Moore counties.
Khanna won second place in Investigative Reporting (with three others) for a package about Art Pope, which ended up being picked up by Jane Meyer at The New Yorker for her own profile on Pope.
Last year, Milan won two awards from NCPA, both in the for her education reporting. She majored in journalism while a student at Elon. She served as a reporter, A&E editor and managing editor of The Pendulum.
The Sanford Herald won 29 total awards, including General Excellence for the second year in a row in its circulation division and the first-place Public Service Award for newspapers with a circulation less than 25,000 for its coverage of the tornado last April.
Last year, Khanna won first place in enterprise reporting. Khanna was a journalism major while at Elon, and she also served as a reporter and editor for The Pendulum.