Paul Nutcher is a reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland, which is part of the USA TODAY NETWORK in Florida. He covers business, education, government and criminal justice, among other general assignments.
His coverage for The Ledger includes stories on Florida’s agriculture, especially the citrus industry; Mosaic’s phosphate mining; retailers such as Amazon, Aldi, Walmart and Publix Super Markets, Inc.; affordable housing, city and county government elections, ordinances and expenditures; education topics about Florida public and charter schools, including book bans, teacher’s unions, LGBTQ rights and Moms for America school board candidates; and growth and development issues within one of the fasted growing regions of the United States. His recent coverage of the criminal justice system in Polk County, Florida, includes gavel-to-gavel coverage of death penalty murder cases and the constitutionality of Florida’s new 8-4 verdict for death penalty recommendations by a jury.
He enjoys the daily hustle of cranking out timely and relevant deadline stories as well as the longer-term in-depth enterprise stories and investigative series. He has had several opportunity to be a part of award-winning teams of reporters and editors in both Pittsburgh and Florida. A description of his work ranges from story telling to public service articles.
Before relocating to the suburbs of Orlando, he also worked as a reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other newspapers in the tri-state area of southwestern Pennsylvania, Delmarva and Florida.
Teaching and Public Relations
Between reporting gigs, he has worked as a public relations manager and an English teacher. He taught English language arts in two Florida school districts, where he taught middle schools students essay writing and reading skills. He also specialized in building product marketing and sustainability consulting as a strategic marketing and communications professional.
He blogs and writes non-fiction articles as well as fiction and poetry. Throughout his career he has grown a following on social media accounts, gaining nearly 10,000 friends and followers. He has also co-hosted a podcast and blogged for websites.
He has a degree in English writing from the University of Pittsburgh with an area of concentration in psychology. He can be reached at nutcher@yahoo.com.