Columnist Russell Frank Takes High Honors in National Competition

For the second consecutive year, StateCollege.com columnist Russell Frank has placed highly in a national competition.

Frank, of State College, won second place this summer in an online-only category of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ annual competition. His work was judged on a selection of three columns that he submitted for consideration.

‘Frank writes with an easy passion that makes his columns delightful,’ competition judge Mae Israel wrote in explaining her decision. ‘He skillfully transforms the reading experience into a choreographed dance.’

A faculty member in the Penn State College of Communications, Frank won second-place honors from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 2010, as well. He has written weekly, general-interest columns for StateCollege.com since 2009.

Outside of academia, Frank’s professional experience includes a range of work in newspapers. The StateCollege.com columns that he submitted for consideration in this year’s column competition are these:

• Charles Moore: An Appreciation (March 19, 2010)

• From Penn State to the NFL: Football’s Terrible Beauty (Nov. 12, 2010)

• A Love Affair with ‘Beatrice,’ the GPS Guide (Oct. 1, 2010)

‘When I sit down and write a column, I say to myself: ‘What have I been thinking about the past few days?” Frank said. ‘ … The only consideration is, will people enjoy reading it?’

He said writers need to have confidence that ‘whatever you choose to write about, you can write about it in an interesting way.’

Columnists tend to hear heavily from those readers they’ve managed to annoy, so it’s especially nice ‘to get validation from a peer’ in a national contest, Frank added.

‘It’s like — how … you know you’re not delusional,’ he said with a laugh.

Related content

• Russell Frank’s StateCollege.com columns page and short biography