Elon honors NBC reporter Gary Grumbach with Top 10 Under 10 award

A newsroom stint that started on Elon University’s campus and sent Gary Grumbach to Charlotte within 72 hours has carried the 2016 journalism graduate to NBC News in Washington, D.C., where he now covers the Supreme Court and federal courts. Elon has named the former Elon Local News reporter one of its 2026 Top 10 Under 10 Alumni Award recipients.

Grumbach’s path runs through the kind of student newsroom experience that can shape a national career. Elon said he arrived on campus in fall 2012, joined Elon Local News immediately and was in a car headed to Charlotte almost at once for the network’s Democratic National Convention coverage. From there, his student reporting stretched far beyond Alamance County, taking him to Raleigh, Des Moines, Concord, New Hampshire, and João Pessoa, Brazil.

That range mattered. Elon said Grumbach’s student work included coverage of North Carolina’s bathroom bill and the future of the internet, the sort of stories that demanded both reporting discipline and comfort with complicated public policy debates. Today, NBC News identifies him as a legal affairs reporter based in Washington, and his work continues to center on major national legal and political developments.

The Top 10 Under 10 award is part of Elon’s spring alumni honors program. The university says the distinction goes to alumni from the past 10 years who have achieved major professional success, made a difference in their communities and continued to serve as partners, advocates and investors for Elon. Grumbach was set to receive the award during Elon’s Alumni Awards Weekend, scheduled for May 1-2, 2026.

His rise also reflects a broader Elon journalism pipeline that has helped move students from campus reporting to commercial television newsrooms. Joe Bruno, another Elon journalism alumnus, is now a reporter at WSOC-TV in Charlotte and has been in the city since 2014, showing how the university’s media network has helped launch careers that stay rooted in North Carolina even as they reach national audiences.

For current Elon students watching Grumbach’s path, the lesson is plain: the leap from campus copy desk to network coverage did not happen overnight. It began with early assignments, long drives, unfamiliar cities and the willingness to take on stories that mattered well beyond campus.