The annual Bynum G. Shaw Prize for excellence in journalism was awarded this week to Elizabeth Maline. Two finalists, Natalie Alms and Katherine Laws, were also chosen.

This year, the prize goes to Elizabeth Maline, the online managing editor at the OG&B. From the moment the college decided to suspend campus life, Elizabeth and the rest of the editorial board went to work to publish remotely. Their editorial explaining the move speaks to the urgency of the moment: “…our editorial staff is now spread across the country with no access to our newsroom. However, this does not mean that we will stop working. In fact, it is more important now than ever that we continue to report on breaking news and student life surrounding our new reality.” 

Since then, Elizabeth has edited and posted dozens of stories, from breaking news to deep enterprise. If journalism is the first draft of history, these stories provide the record of our WFU community.

Elizabeth is equally committed to her classroom work. Her professors write that she stands out as a student ready to grapple with difficult discussions of ethics, to organize group work, and to draw sensitive profiles from reluctant sources. As Prof. Ivan Weiss notes: “With her creativity and work ethic, there’s no telling where she can go.” 

Natalie Alms spent last summer interning at the Salisbury Post, where she covered breaking news and developed enterprise stories, including one on foster care, which won an award from the N.C. Press Association. As Prof. Barry Yeoman writes: “Not many undergraduates get honored by the North Carolina Press Association, but Natalie Alms was producing professional-level work even before graduation. Her passion to tell stories of people whose voices are often marginalized, and to tell them well, is evident in every paragraph she publishes.”

Katherine Laws is an English major who has interned at Wake Forest Magazine and at Our State. Her work has also been aired on WFDD. She is a tenacious reporter and a graceful writer, who, as Yeoman notes, knows “how to compose sentences so beautiful they make readers gasp.”