The 2025-2026 school year has already been a hit for LHS Publications; receiving Best of Show awards at the NSPA/JEA National Convention in the Fall, being nominated as an NSPA Innovation Pacemaker Finalist for the second year in a row, and now to winning the most awards at the Missouri Interscholastic Journalism Association Journalism Day than ever before.
On March 25, due to J-Day taking place during spring break, only three students from LHS Publications attended J-Day at Mizzou where they had a day full of sessions listening to journalism professionals, including the keynote speaker, Executive Producer of the Tiger Kickoff Show and reporter for KOMU 8 sports, Tyson Ellison. During his speech Ellison made lots of key points he wanted students to take away with them, including is main key point “The Player is the Platform”
Out of the thousands of projects that are submitted from hundreds of schools in Missouri, only 40% of them win one of four awards that are given out at J-Day. In order from highest to lowest the awards range from, All Missouri, Superior, Excellent, and Honorable Mention. LHS Publications brought home 36 awards out of the 1,069 that were given out including at least one from every category. Along with that five students from Liberty were recognized on the 2026 MIJA Senior Honor Roll.
Yearbook editor-in-chief Austin Koehnemann (12) was one of the students that attended J-Day, where she also received an Excellent award for the Yearbook Overall Theme/Concept category for the theme of the yearbook, “Just Like Nowhere Else” which was created this past summer.
“We had submitted a lot of our work back in January, and it was really rewarding to see our hard work pay off,” Koehnemann said. “Almost everything we had submitted f0r the event got an award. I think our program has really improved this year, and everyone has put in a lot of work to get us to this point.”
With these 36 awards being the most ever received by LHS Publications, another record was broken during J-Day. Will Nolan (12) became the first student journalist from LHS Publications to be named on the 2026 MIJA All-State Team. The All-State team recognizes the students who proven themselves as the “MVP’s” of student journalism, whose leadership, energy, education, and expertise, make their publications possible, however while a majority of their work is done behind-the-scenes.
LHS Publications adviser and MIJA President Jonathan Hall felt very ecstatic hearing how many awards the program received.
“It’s always very rewarding to see this as an adviser, especially how a lot of these projects developed from the beginning,” Hall said. “I really like to use these awards as teaching tools to the rest of the classes.”
