Clifton Barnes of Cary has earned a national writing award for an article on Raleigh's historic Briggs Hardware Building. (Dec. 2012)

The article, written for the Everett Gaskins Hancock law firm housed in the building, won an Award of Excellence from the DC area-based Communications Concepts through its 2012 Awards for Publication Excellence competition.

The article was one of only two national winners in the Web Writing category. Barnes, a UNC-Chapel Hill journalism and political science grad, also helped with some of the other web content on EGHlaw.com.

Judges said the article is well written, detailed without being dry and, in fact, is quite interesting. They added that Barnes did superb historical research and made good use of quotes from experts on the building.

The article can be accessed by going to http://www.eghlaw.com/about and clicking on “The Historic Briggs Hardware Building.”

John De Lellis of Communications Concepts says with nearly 3,400 entries in various categories, the competition was intense. He says the awards were based on excellence in writing, quality of content and the success of the entry in achieving overall communications effectiveness.

Barnes, who has now won more than 70 journalism awards, served as director of communications for the N.C. Bar Association from 1987 to 2002 and, before that, was a newspaper writer and editor.

Today he is a freelance writer, editor and Web developer who owns several websites including cb3media.com and capitalsportsnc.com.

Along with his wife Andrea, he raises their six-year-old son Will Griffin. Barnes is the son of W.C. and Lorraine Barnes, formerly of Rocky Mount, who now live in Atlantic Beach.

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