The Lawrence Journal-World won 16 first-place awards in the annual Awards of Excellence competition sponsored by the Kansas Press Association.

The awards will be presented at the association’s annual meeting April 21 in Topeka.

The newspaper also won 11 second-place awards, 17 third-place awards and two honorable mentions.

First-place winners:

¢ Agricultural story: “Growing more, living with less” by George Diepenbrock.

¢ Infographic: “What we drink” by Karl Gehring.

¢ Column writing: Boomer Girl Diary by Cathy Hamilton.

¢ Feature package: “Checking into Lawrence Memorial Hospital” by Nick Krug, Jared Soares and Dave Ranney.

¢ Government/political story: “With defibrillator program, city officials don’t miss a beat” by Chad Lawhorn.

¢ Local business story: “Concrete results” by Chad Lawhorn.

¢ Special section: “KU Today” edited by Christy Little.

¢ Headline writing: Mindie Paget.

¢ Youth story: “Senior sass” by Mindie Paget.

¢ Education story: “World meets western Kansas” by Terry Rombeck.

¢ Sports story: “Lions’ field day” by Scott Tittrington.

¢ Sports feature story: “No love for the NBADL” by Ryan Wood.

¢ Design and layout.

¢ Best use of photos.

¢ Sports pages.

¢ Best newspaper Web site.

Second-place winners are Bill Snead, series and feature package, along with Ginny Gzalaznik; Tom Keegan, sports column writing; Christy Little, special section and youth story; Jon Niccum, headline writing; Dave Ranney, feature writing; Mike Yoder, sports photography; the Journal-World for front page, editorial page and news and writing.

Third-place winners are Mike Belt, agricultural story; Diepenbrock, government/

political story; Mark Fagan, local business and sports story; Ann Gardner, editorial writing; Richard Gwin, news photo; Keegan, sports feature; Katie Kritikos, headline writing; Krug, photo illustration; Rombeck, feature and religion story; Scott Rothschild, series; Tittrington, sports column writing; Dave Toplikar, education story; Eric Weslander, news story; Yoder, feature photo.

Rombeck and Yoder also received honorable mentions for their work.