Clifton Barnes of Cary has won a national award for his website CapitalSportsNC.com. (Dec. 2013)

The website won an Award of Excellence from the DC area-based Communications Concepts through its 2013 Awards for Publication Excellence competition.

One of nine national winners in the WordPress site category, CapitalSportsNC.com was the only sports-related website represented among winners in all website-related categories.

Barnes, a UNC-Chapel Hill journalism and political science grad, started the site in order to provide a one-stop site for those interested in sports in the Triangle NC area. Articles from all the top media outlets and sports teams in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area are featured along with videos, tweets and original sports commentary.

Judges said the site is “unabashedly focused on true sports fans.” Strictly for demanding sports enthusiasts, judges said, the site “is packed, wall to wall, with an enormous range of news items, features and lively commentary, obviously written by someone with both a passion for sports and the native ability to write well.”

In addition, judges said the site compels the visitor to keep coming back. “If you’re a fan in the Triangle, this is where you want to be,” judges wrote.

John De Lellis of Communications Concepts says with more than 2,400 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 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 TarHeelFavorites.com, which will launch in 2014.

Along with his wife Andrea, he raises their seven-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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