For the second year in a row, LJWorld.com has earned the Associated Press Managing Editors award for online convergence.

The prestigious awards are given for “print-online combinations that exhibit the best applications of both in presenting the story.” This year’s award was given for coverage of Kansas University’s run to a national championship by the staffs of LJWorld.com, the Lawrence Journal-World and 6News. LJWorld.com won last year for its coverage of mining’s legacy on southeastern Kansas.

LJWorld.com won in the category for newspapers with circulation less than 40,000. Other winners include the Roanoke Times – 40,000-150,000, also a repeat winner – and the Oregonian, Portland, Ore., over 150,000.

The entry consisted of an interactive retrospective built by the staff at Mediaphormedia, the online division of The World Company which owns the Journal-World, and composed of the stories, videos and photos produced by journalists in Lawrence and on the road with the team as it marched through the season. Also integral to the retrospective were photos and videos captured by KU fans across the country and during the celebrations in Lawrence.

“The APME convergence award is a high honor. It’s a validation of the vision for multimedia journalism and audience interaction we work on every day,” online editorial projects manager David Ryan said.

Tom Keegan, the Journal-World’s sports editor, compared the skills necessary to win a national championship with those needed to win an award like this one.

“The guys we covered ran a lot faster and jumped a lot higher, but we did have a couple things in common: teamwork and hard work,” he said. “You can’t win anything without those qualities, whether it’s a national title or an award like this. Nobody cared who got the credit.”

Virtually all of the news, sports, photo and online staffs contributed the journalism that is the backbone of the retrospective.

APME is a group of editors at American and Canadian newspapers that are members of either the Associated Press or Canadian Press. This is the seventh year for the APME awards.