KansasCity.com

Prestigious awards have honored the work of Star journalists for decades.

In its 126-year history, the newspaper has won seven Pulitzer prizes and a special Pulitzer citation. It also has won four George Polk Awards since 1991, several National Headliner Awards and numerous other national honors.

Here are some of its recent awards:

Overall

• The Star has won 12 of the last 13 Gold Cups awarded by the Missouri Press Association for the most points overall in the annual journalism contest.

• For the second time in three years, Joe Posnanski was honored as the top sports columnist in the United States by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Columnist Jason Whitlock also was in the top 10 among columnists in the country.
• Sports Daily won top-10 honors for its Sunday sections and special sections. The Star also led all big-circulation newspapers in 2006 with seven top-10 finishes in the contest’s writing categories.

• The business section was named among the top four in large newspapers across the country by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

• The Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards named FYI one of the top three feature sections nationally for newspapers of The Star’s size.
• Lisa Gutierrez won first place in feature writing from the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors. Her winning entry was a profile of famed photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks.

• Judy L. Thomas was a 2006 winner in the 53rd annual Unity Awards in Media for a story that exposed restrictive covenants in Kansas City area deeds and homes association bylaws.
• Lee Hill Kavanaugh won second place from the Military Reporters and Editors for the ``Coming Home’’ series.

• A crime blog compiled by Greg Reeves was named the best media-affiliated news blog in the country in 2006 in the 11th annual EPpy awards, which honor "the best online newspapering and broadcasting."