Nor’West Newspapers and The Wichita Eagle will share this year’s Burton W. Marvin Kansas News Enterprise Award, the William Allen White Foundation announced Friday.

The award is given annually to outstanding news reporting in Kansas. It is named for the foundation’s first director and former dean of the Kansas University school of journalism.

In a 16-page tabloid titled “Rural Schools … On the Bubble,” Nor’West reporters wrote about enrollment decline in rural schools and examined what school consolidation would mean to them. Papers in the group are the Bird City Times, Colby Free Press, Goodland Star-News, Norton Telegram, Oberlin Herald and Saint Francis Herald.

The Wichita Eagle won for its reporting on the two dozen Kansans who have been killed in the past four years by people under supervision of state parole officers. The stories came as a result of a lawsuit that required the Department of Corrections to release the information.