Arts & Entertainment Editor Ashley Atkinson won second place in the criticism category for three music reviews. And the DTH staff won third place in the special section category for Defining a Decade, which chronicled the major players and events of the 1990s in the nation, state and UNC campus.
The DTH competed with more than 100 newspapers from across the state with circulations between 15,000 and 34,999. It was the only college newspaper to win an award.
Atkinson, a junior who won first place in the same category last year, said "I am honored to even be in the company of professional journalists, much less win an award as a professional journalist."
The judges, taken from newspapers in New York and Pennsylvania, described Atkinson's work as "snappy prose (with) strong opinions on lively, topical subjects. Fun."
DTH Editor Matt Dees said the award for Defining a Decade was particularly meaningful because it was a total newsroom effort. "The project was ambitious and far-reaching, which meant it required a good deal of research and planning ahead," he said. "But under the leadership of (last year's editor) Rob Nelson, it came out beautifully."
The judges characterized the decade project as a "novel approach to ring in the new millennium, an instant history of the past 10 years."
