Hutchings won several top prizes from the California Journalism Awards — a statewide contest — in 2025, for work produced during the previous calendar year. 

Her 2025 California Journalism Awards include: 

• 1st Place, Coverage of Business & the Economy
• 1st Place, Coverage of Local Government
• 1st Place, In-Depth Reporting
• 1st Place, Tourism/Travel Writing/Reporting
• 2nd Place, Coverage of Youth & Education
• 2nd Place, Labor Reporting
• 2nd Place, Housing and Land-Use Reporting
• 2nd Place, Health Reporting
• 2nd Place, Environment Reporting 
• 3rd Place, Coverage of Business & the Economy
• 3rd Place, In-Depth Reporting 
• 3rd Place, Homelessness Reporting
• 4th Place, Enterprise News Story

Hutchings also took home several awards from the California Journalism Awards in 2024, for work produced during the previous calendar year, including a 1st Place Sports Feature Story. 

In total, she won nine California Journalism Awards in 2024. The Grunion Gazette, a weekly newspaper of which Hutchings is the editor, also won a 2nd Place General Excellence prize that year. 

Hutchings also won a 3rd Place prize in the Personality Profile category from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2024. 

In 2023, Hutchings was named a finalist for Print Journalist of the Year by the Los Angeles Press Club. The Press Club, that same year, also awarded her a 3rd Place prize in the News Feature Writing category. 

She also won a 2nd Place prize in the Profile Story category from the CNPAs in 2022. 

Hutchings contributed to BuzzFeed News' "FinCen Files" investigation —  which was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in International Reporting in 2021.