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Contributing writer Annette Mardis - Rick Mardis

A veteran of 30 years of newspaper work, Annette Mardis currently is a copy editor for Media General. Here's how she got to this point:

• While attending St. Petersburg Junior College and the University of South Florida, Annette worked part time for the St. Petersburg Times and Evening Independent, and also was a summer intern for the Times.
• After graduating with a bachelor's degree in mass communications, she spent almost 10 years at the Clearwater Sun, then 19 at The Tampa Tribune. Annette has written about crime and punishment; education; religion; music; fashion; local, state and national news; human interest stories; personality profiles; and a number of other topics. She left the Sun as its city editor; designed regional news sections while at The Tribune, and was a front-line bureau editor there, too.
• She left the newspaper business for about four years and tried to embark on a new career. The problem was, she had only a vague idea of what she wanted to do, and such pursuits didn't help pay the bills. She volunteered at a nearby elementary school, which led to a part-time job supervising nearly the entire student body of another elementary school (not all at once, but it seemed like it sometimes) during after-lunch recess.
• While still working the school job, she inadvertently was sucked back in to newspaper work as a copy editor. After working part-time for a few months she became a full-time employee of what Media General calls the Community Consolidated Editing Center in Tampa. There, she edits stories, writes headlines, head decks and cutlines, proofs pages and whatever else is needed for Highlands Today, Hernando Today, The Suncoast News, The West Pasco Press, Central Florida's Agri-Leader and the weekly community sections of The Tampa Tribune.
• In her leisure hours, Annette likes to ride on her husband's Harley; spoil her granchildren, grandnephew and soon-to-arrive grandniece; watch NASCAR; root for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Rays and Tampa Bay Lightning; and keep company with her two dogs and one talking parrot.