Paula Gardner

About Paula

Paula Gardner is a reporter on MLive’sPublic Interest Team, where she spent three years specializing in business and real estate coverage before moving into the environmental realm. She was namedMichigan Journalist of the Year in 2019 for her coverage of PFAS in the state and for a package looking at the state’s economy. She’s also earned several statewide writing and reporting awards from theMichigan Associated Press, Michigan Press Association and Detroit Press Club Foundation. Besides multiple awards with her partner on environmental coverage, Garret Ellison, Gardner’s award-winning topics include enterprise on statewide mall redevelopment, breaking coverage of a historic building fire, and an investigation with a colleague, “Uneven Paying Field,” examining college sports funding among public universities. Her background includes extensive editing experience, including Michigan BusinessReview, and leading her newsroom’s innovation in digital journalism at AnnArbor.com.As editor of theAnn Arbor News, which was named Newspaper of the Year by the MPA, she and her staff broke annual corporate readership records through coverage based on public records and news-driven enterprise.Paula started her career as a police reporter at the Ypsilanti (Michigan) Press. She’s taught journalism atEastern Michigan University and volunteers as a communications chair for a nonprofit in her Ann Arbor neighborhood. Her family includes her husband, John, an artist; a daughter at Grand Valley StateUniversity; and her son, who will attend Michigan State University this fall