CB3Media's owner earns national honor
Barnes wins national award for real estate reporting
 Clifton Barnes of Cary has won a national award for Real Estate Reporting.
Writing for The Triangle Business Journal of Raleigh, Barnes won an Award of Excellence from the DC area-based Communications Concepts through its 2023 Awards for Publication Excellence competition.
Barnes, a native of Rocky Mount, was the lone winner in the Real Estate/Home Improvement writing category.
"While the topic of commercial real estate, in and of itself, is not usually a 'must-read,'" one judge wrote, "these articles were all extremely well-written, informative and a pleasure to read."
Judges agreed that Barnes' writing was concise while still providing a wealth of information, adding that he has the ability to keep the reader's interest throughout the articles.
The judges especially pointed to articles that dealt with an upcoming pickleball facility, a Habitat for Humanity affordable housing project, a long-awaited condominium construction and a WakeMed medical office building as examples of superior reporting.
Barnes credits his Triangle Business Journal editors David Purtell, 1983 UNC grad Dane Huffman and Sougata Mukherjee with helping him understand what the business community wants and needs to know when writing commercial real estate articles.
This is the second time Barnes has won an award for commercial real estate reporting, but he has now won at least one award in the APEX national competition for 13 years in a row, including awards for sports-related articles, law-related articles, opinion pieces, social media and website development.
Barnes has won nearly 100 awards over the years from various organizations including the N.C. Press Association, the National Association of Bar Executives, the N.C Society of Historians, the Carolinas Association of Business Communicators and the National Newspaper Association.
Barnes served as director of communications for the N.C. Bar Association for 15 years and, before that, was a newspaper writer and editor.
Today he is a freelance writer who owns several websites, including one that chronicles each UNC basketball game and another that features articles related to sports in the Triangle area of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill.
Barnes, who earned a double major in Journalism and Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill, is known for spear-heading movements to get a highway marker for Kay Kyser in Rocky Mount and a yearly Hometown Spirit Award in Cary.
Along with his wife Andrea, he raises their 17-year-old son Will, who is a senior at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh. Barnes is the son of W.C. (deceased) and Lorraine Barnes of Atlantic Beach.
    
   
    
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