The Sunflower took home 40 awards this week at the Kansas Collegiate Media statewide conference.

The Sunflower earned first place in every writing category except one. The writing categories The Sunflower earned first place in are: news writing & reporting, feature writing, editorial writing, column writing, review writing, headline writing, and sports feature writing.

The Sunflower also earned first place awards in news photo, sports photo, page design, illustrations & infographics, online photo gallery, social media post, and special sections categories.

The Sunflower competed against all four-year public universities in Kansas for the awards. The online photo gallery and social media post categories were against all colleges and universities in Kansas.

Sunflower staff members also took the top three rankings in the statewide Journalist of the Year competition.

The Sunflower’s Photo Editor Brian Hayes won 2018 Journalist of the Year. Reporter Ray Strunk was first runner-up and Managing Editor Jenna Farhat was second runner-up for the award. Sunflower journalists competed against journalists from four-year universities all over Kansas, both public and private.