Leon Tucker won the prestigious Hearst Award while he was a student journalist.
Florida A&M University School of Journalism & Graphic Communication graduate Leon Tucker has been named executive editor of the Lakeland (Florida) Ledger.
Tucker, who grew up in St. Petersburg, is the first African American to lead the Ledger newsroom in the publication’s 97-year history.
While attending FAMU, Tucker won the prestigious William Randolph Hearst Award for breaking news for college newspaper journalism. After graduation in 1998, he worked as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Times), The Tennessean in Nashville, and the Delaware News-Journal in Wilmington.
For the past year, Tucker served as the communications director for The Executive Leadership Council in Washington, D.C., an organization dedicated to increasing the number of Black executives in top corporations throughout the world.
The Ledger has a 65,987 daily circulation and about 81, 366 on Sunday.
