Craig Pittman is an American journalist and an author of books mostly about Florida. He was a reporter and columnist for the ''

Tampa Bay Times The ''Tampa Bay Times'', called the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by The Poynter Institute ...

'' for thirty-one years before becoming a weekly columnist for the ''

Florida Phoenix States Newsroom is a nonprofit news network in the United States. Its newsrooms focus mostly on state politics. States Newsroom grew out of NC Policy Watch, a progressive think tank founded in 2004 by Chris Fitzsimon, who said it "is sort of t ...

''. He is co-host of the podcast entitled ''Welcome to Florida'' and issues a weekly newsletter entitled ''Oh Florida!, the Newsletter''. An award winning series of articles he co-authored was published as, ''Paving Paradise''. In 2020, the Florida Heritage Book Festival honored Pittman as a "Living Legend". He is a native Floridian. Pittman graduated from

Troy University Troy University is a public university in Troy, Alabama, United States. It was founded in 1887 as Troy State Normal School within the Alabama State University System, and is now the flagship university of the Troy University System. It was one ...

in Alabama in 1981.

Books

*''Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss'' (2009) (co-authored with Matthew Waite) *''Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species'' (2010) *''The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchid'' (2012) *''Oh, Florida! How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country'' (2016) *''Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther '' (2020) *''The State You're In: Florida Men, Florida Women, and Other Wildlife'' (2021)

''The Scent of Scandal''

This nonfiction book, which focuses on a Florida court case involving charges of orchid smuggling, is the only book ever classified as "True Crime/Gardening".

''Oh, Florida!''

According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', Pittman's 2016 book entitled, ''Oh, Florida! How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country'', is a "compulsively readable", native son's view of the state he "obviously loves", in which he makes a persuasive case that Florida has an outsize influence on the national culture. The book grew out of a series of articles Pittman wrote for the magazine, ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

''. The book, which covers such topics as driving in Florida, gambling in Florida, and sin and salvation in Florida, contains one of the earliest published uses of the phrase "Drainpipe of America". It became a ''New York Times'' bestseller. In February 2017, it won the Florida Book Award gold medal for Florida nonfiction.

''Cat Tale''

Documents the decades-long rediscovery of the

Florida panther The Florida panther is a North American cougar (''P. c. couguar'') population in South Florida. It lives in pinelands, tropical hardwood hammocks and mixed freshwater swamp forests. Its range includes the Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglade ...

, its election to state animal, and conservationist attempts to protect it from inbreeding, pollution, hunting, loss of food, and habitat loss. It describes a controversy when the leading panther expert, Dr. David Maehr, covertly took money from wealthy donors and then wrote faulty science papers that would give developers the green light to "pave" over natural swamps and forests needed for panther habitat.

References

External links

WFME author interviewWLRN author interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pittman, Craig Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American male journalists