VISUAL CATEGORIES

Seventeen categories allow students to work on creating photographs, videos, multimedia, illustrations and designs in advance of the February submission deadline. Using a prompt provided below by KSPA, the students create their journalism and then submit it online. Comments from judges on these rubrics are returned to advisers via email after the contest results are final.

Students who qualify for state will be given a new set of prompts in March to be completed by April 10.

Prompts are now available. Click on the links below to view individual prompts. A link to submit your visual entry will be on the prompt.

Enter visual submissions here!

See a live list of entries as they are turned in!

• Category V01: Academics Photography
• Category V02: Advertising Design
• Category V03: Digital Illustration
• Category V04: Editorial Cartoon
• Category V05: Headline Writing & Design
• Category V06: Infographic Design
• Category V07: Multimedia Storytelling (can be a team of up to four)
• Category V08: News Page Design
• Category V09: Social Media (new in 2025: individual entries, not teams)
• Category V10: Sports Action Photography
• Category V11: Sports Feature Photography
• Category V12: Student Life Photography
• Category V13: Video News (can be a team of up to four)
• Category V14: Video PSA (can be a team of up to four)
• Category V15: Video Sports Promo (can be a team of up to four)
• Category V16: Yearbook Design
• Category V17: Yearbook Theme & Graphics (can be team of up to two)

Note: These contests are subject to KSPA’s policy on Artificial Intelligence.

DEADLINE IS TUESDAY, FEB. 4 at 5 p.m.

WRITING CONTESTS

Nine additional contests of writing include categories like feature writing, copyediting and cutline writing. Using prompts provided by KSPA in January, students have a couple of days to craft stories, editorials and cutlines that are judged by local professionals. Comments from judges on these rubrics and on their writing entries are returned to advisers via email after the contest results are final.

Students who qualify for state will be compete again with different prompts from April 7-10.

Submission and supervision: To compete in the KSPA Writing Contests, all schools must comply with the KSPA Artificial Intelligence Policy. That policy, approved by the KSPA board in 2023, requires students to complete their entire writing contest entry in a proctored location. This proctored location will ensure that students do not have access to artificial intelligence and that they do not use it to create their writing entry. Students will have 65 minutes to write their entry and then will turn it into a Google Form. Students should type their story in a Google Doc, Word document or other word-processing program and can use the built-in spelling and grammar check to help in the proofreading process. AI like ChatGPT or other software that could write the entire story for the student is not allowed.

We encourage advisers to plan ahead for proctoring times and locations at their school during the KSPA Writing Contest competition window.

See a live list of entries as they are turned in!

Click on the individual contest link below when you are ready to compete.

*Each contest prompt contains the link needed to submit your entry.

*Each contest prompt has the judging criteria at the bottom of the document.

• Category W1: Copyediting (this contest involves a multiple choice style quiz and editing of a story provided)
• Category W2: Newspaper Sports Writing
• Category W3: Yearbook Copy
• Category W4: Feature Writing
• Category W5: News Writing
• Category W6: Cutline/Caption Writing
• Category W7: Editorial Writing
• Category W8: Yearbook Sports Writing
• Category W9: Review Writing

DEADLINE IS THURSDAY, JAN. 30 at 5 p.m.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Jan. 14 from 4 -5 p.m:
Regional Contest online Q&A with board members (drop in with any questions you might have)

Jan. 16: Deadline:
Regional Contest registration REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.

Jan. 27:
Regional Contest: Writing prompts posted

Jan. 27 from 4 -5 p.m:
Regional Contest online Q&A with board members (drop in with any questions you might have)

Jan. 29 from 2- 3:30 p.m:
Regional Contest online Q&A with board members (drop in with any questions you might have)

Jan. 30 by 5 p.m.:
Deadline: Regional Contest – Writing entries

Feb, 4 by 5 p.m.:
Deadline: Regional Contest – Visual entries

How are regional groupings created?

Here are the new regional groupings for 2025. Each grouping represents a balanced number of schools and total entries based on this year’s registrations. Schools will compete against each other within the regional for a chance to advance to the state contest in May.

Our digital submission system will automatically slot entries from your school into the correct regional grouping for judging. Results for each regional will be announced in March.

Policy on contests entries from school districts with academies (approved 2022)

Some Kansas school districts allow students to enroll at their high school and a school district academy, often to learn specialized skills. In those circumstances, for the purposes of state and regional contests KSPA will require:

• Each institution that submits entries must have a KSPA member adviser as a teacher at the school. It is not sufficient to have a membership for only the high school but not the academy – or vice versa.

• If a student participates in a publication, club or curricular class at one institution, the student should enter KSPA contests as a student at that same institution. (For instance, if Pat is editor of the high school yearbook, Pat should enter the contest on behalf of the high school – not the academy.)

• If a student participates in a publication(s), club(s) or curricular class(es) at both institutions, that student may choose which institution to compete for. (For instance, if Sam is a newspaper photographer at the high school, but runs social media at the academy, Sam can choose to submit entries for either the high school or the academy.)

• The KSHSAA classification of the school district academy will be determined by the combined enrollment of all high schools that send students to the academy.

Registration deadline:

The deadline for contest registration is Jan. 16, 2025. REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.

Membership check:

Schools competing in the Regional Contest must be a paid member of KSPA. Here is a link to our current membership list. Here is a link to join if you haven’t already. Contact our KSPA administrative assistant Haylee Hedge with questions about membership (staff@kspaonline.org)

Entry limit:

A particular student may participate in five total categories, whether individually or as a team.

A school can submit up to two entries in each category, unless the school is using “Wild Card” entries in that category.

Each school can submit up to three “Wild Card” entries.

Fees & Costs:

The fee for each entry is $15.

• Payment may be made online by credit card at the time of registration.
• For payment by check, please make checks payable to KSPA sent to our address (please alert your bookkeeper of the correct KSPA address below):
  • Kansas Scholastic Press Association
    1435 Jayhawk Boulevard
    Stauffer Flint Hall
    Lawrence, KS 66045

No refunds can be issued for unused registrations.

Need help organizing these entries?

This Google sheet is not a required step in the registration process, but should help advisers in gathering — whether on paper or digitally — the information needed to organize for the KSPA Regional or State Contest. Advisers do not need to communicate the names of their students upon registration. Students will provide their names upon submission of their entry.

Have questions?

Email the KSPA office administrator, Haylee Hedge, at staff@kspaonline.org

The use of artificial intelligence is prohibited in all KSPA contests. KSPA’s goals remain the same: encouraging learning, providing feedback and developing journalists through competitions. The use of artificial intelligence by competitors would damage these goals.

To protect the integrity of KSPA contests, we require these two protocols:

1. Student and adviser acknowledgment that Artificial Intelligence will not be used for both digital and written contest entries
2. Adult proctoring/supervision of students while they compete in writing contest 

Click here to read KSPA’s AI policy.

How do the judges evaluate entries?

Students can reference the rubrics to see the qualities that judges usually seek. Each rubric is also included on each contest prompt as well.

Number of awards

KSPA urges all judges in all categories and classifications to award 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th place.

However, some judges will decide to award fewer than six places. In the past, some judges have cited these reasons for not awarding three honorable mentions:

• a small number of entries in a specific category
• entries that did not follow instructions
• lack of quality from entries

This circumstance — with fewer than six award winners — is more common in Regional Contests than the State Contest. Advisers should be aware of this possibility. The KSPA staff will follow up with judges to request they submit six award winners unless one of the bullet points above applies.

Past regional & state prompts

Want a preview of what the Writing Category prompts will be like? Want a classroom activity for your students? Need an emergency lesson plan?

KSPA has a page of prompts from previous state and regional contests for you. We will continue to add to the collection as we search through our archives. 

ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: please notice that some of the rules and formats for the contests have changed (most recently for the News Page Design Contest). Be sure to read all directions for this year’s contest for guidance.

Simply Better

Check out our “Simply Better” page, a showcase of the award-winning entries from previous Regional and State competitions. These examples can be used as classroom examples for students who will compete in State.