Journalism student, Pendulum site named SPJ national award winners

Senior journalism major Claire Esparros and ElonPendulum.com were both named National Winners in the Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards competition. The announcement was made May 1.

Esparros, the former photo editor of The Pendulum, won in the Photo Illustration (Medium School Division) category for a Pendulum front-page illustration titled “Chick-fil-A: Here to stay?” that creatively and visually displayed the results of a Pendulum student survey about the restaurant’s presence on campus.

The Pendulum’s website was honored in the Best Affiliated Website (Medium School Division) category. (The Medium School Division is made up of schools with enrollments of 5,001-9,999.)

Both Esparros and ElonPendulum.com won first-place Mark of Excellence regional honors at the SPJ Region 2 conference April 20 in Norfolk, Va. Twelve regions comprise SPJ, and all regional first-place winners move on to the national round of judging, from which one national winner and national finalists are selected.

The national winners will be honored in a ceremony Sunday, Aug. 25 at the Excellence in Journalism 2013 conference in Anaheim, Calif.

This is the third time The Pendulum or a Pendulum student has received national Mark of Excellence honors. In 2010, Morgan Little ’10 was a national winner in the Online Opinion & Commentary competition, and in 2009, Pam Richter ’09 was named a national finalist for Online Opinion & Commentary for columns she wrote for The Greensboro News & Record. Randy Gyllenhaal ’10 and Drake Springer ’10 also were named national winners in the General News Reporting competition for work they did for Phoenix14News.