The Lawrence Times news team has won seven first-place awards in the 2025 Kansas Press Association Awards of Excellence, including best Investigative Story and Best Community Service Project for our accountability work.
The Times — a small, independent publication that launched four years ago — competes in Division VII, the largest circulation division in the state, alongside mostly much older legacy publications with larger staffs and significantly more resources. Our team earned 16 awards this year.
Maya Hodison, equity reporter, earned first place Investigative Story and Health Story, as well as third place News Story, for her article, “‘He did not just fall and die’: Lawrence mother pleads for answers about the death of her 3-year-old.” The article shares the story of Ilene Tolbert, who has pushed for answers to the questions that have haunted her since the death of her son, Carter, in 2020.
Judges hailed Hodison’s work as a “Powerful, heartbreaking story that explore all feasible options” and “a story that needed to be told.” A third judge wrote, “Use of open records requests and a newspaper’s pursuit of the truth helps a young mother who lost her son and was not getting answers on her own. Excellent use of community service journalism to help the underserved.”
Hodison said she’s incredibly grateful for the recognition and hopes continuous awareness about Carter gets his loved ones closer to the answers they deserve.
“I remain in awe of Ilene’s fearlessness to publicly detail the darkest moments of her life, after exhausting all other avenues that failed her and her son,” Hodison said. “Throughout our numerous meetings and conversations, the waiting periods, the new questions and turns that popped up, she was all in. I appreciate her putting trust in us.”
Reporter Cuyler Dunn, currently a junior at the University of Kansas, won second place Best New Journalist, an award to recognize “high achievement and dedication to the craft of journalism.”
The judge wrote in comments about Dunn’s in-depth articles about the Lawrence school district that “Some incredible background work went into putting these reports together,” and that the community “should be well-served and informed by this reporting.”
“Getting to tell important stories about Lawrence schools is such an honor as a graduate of the district,” said Dunn, a Lawrence High School Class of 2022 alum. “I’m excited to continue this crucial work in my home town.”
The publication as a whole won first place for Best Use of Social Media for “Top notch reporting presented appropriately on a satisfying array of platforms,” the judge wrote.
The Times’ “Preserving public access” won first place for Best Community Service Project, a category judged among all divisions.
We submitted our work archiving community history by recording and publishing general public comment periods of Lawrence City Commission meetings. The commission in June 2024 voted to no longer broadcast general public comment, so without the Times’ work to preserve those moments of the meetings, the public’s only access would be to listen live in person or via Zoom.
“With the belief that these public comment periods are essential public records that ought to be preserved and available to all community members, we immediately chose to undertake recording and publishing the videos ourselves,” Mackenzie Clark, reporter/founder, wrote in submitting the project. “We publish the recordings regardless of the viewpoints of the speakers because we believe it is essential for public information to remain as such.”
Molly Adams, photojournalist and news operations coordinator, and Clark together won first place Feature Package for a multimedia piece about the Village, Lawrence’s community to help people recover from homelessness. They also won first place in Headline Writing for “well written, catchy and accurate” work.
Adams won first and second place in the Best Story/Picture Combination category for her coverage of a Haskell fashion show and of a vigil, respectively. She also won second place Feature Photo and third place Best Environmental Portrait, and third place Agricultural Story.
Clark won third place Special Section – Editorial for the Times’ 2024 election guide for Lawrence and Douglas County voters.
Hodison also won third place Outdoor Story.
Columnist Tom Harper won third place in Column Writing for his pieces about developments and preservation initiatives around town as well as one encouraging the Lawrence City Commission to keep City Hall downtown.
“None of this work, much less the awards, would be possible without the support and trust of our readers,” Clark said. “Words are insufficient to express our gratitude for the way this community has welcomed and embraced the Times over the last four years. We’re looking forward to many more.”
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The photos and posts linked below comprise our award-winning entries for the 2025 contest.
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Lawrence Indigenous, queer communities and allies mourn death of nonbinary Oklahoma teen
Members of Native American and queer Lawrence communities joined in solidarity for a vigil in honor of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student from Oklahoma who died this month after suffering injuries from a fight in the girls’ bathroom at school — the bathroom state law required them to use.
Bryndal Hoover / LHS Budget
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
August Rudisell/Lawrence Times
Not with a bang but a whimper: Lawrence drone show never takes off
With storms in the forecast again, one might have thought the weather would be the biggest concern for the drone show planned for Lawrence’s Summerfest. Rather, apparent network issues rained on the crowd’s parade as the dozens of tiny flying machines never took to the sky.
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Tom Harper/Lawrence Times
Maya Hodison/Lawrence Times
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
Molly Adams/Lawrence Times
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