Friday is the last day of employment for St. Petersburg Times Tallahassee reporter Janet Zink, who on Monday begins the next chapter of her life as director of communications for the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority.
An Ohio native, Zink lived in Tampa for nearly 30 years before getting a promotion last December to work in the Times' Tallahassee Bureau, a new opportunity that she seized upon, covering the beginnings of the Rick Scott administration and the explosive 2011 Legislative session.
But the opportunity to return to Tampa (and also make a considerably more amount of money) persuaded the reporter to work at the Aviation Authority, now being led by Joe Lopano. In a Q&A exchange sent through e-mail, CL asked Zink about her career at the Times , which began in 2002 after the paper opened its Brandon Bureau, and mostly consisted of being the full time City Hall and Hillsborough County politics reporter.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2011.