As we approach our one-year anniversary,
83 Degrees will be making some
changes in the online publication's navigation, look and feel based on your feedback and improvements
that advancing technology enables us to do for readers and for ourselves in working within a
constantly evolving media industry.
What that means for you is a week of no new stories on October 19 as we
take the back-end of our system down to tinker, tweak and try out some
new ideas that will show up the week after. Some of those changes will
be so subtle, you won't notice. Others are more significant in type
color, font size and image placement.
We're doing it for you, dear readers, and appreciate all that you have
done for us in the past year to give us feedback and help us hone our
product into one that you can proudly call your own and share with
others.
Enjoy this week's stories as well as some of those
Features published in the past that you may have missed the first time around.
And then look for more new stories about the Tampa Bay region's talented
people, innovative ideas, quality of life and sense of place on October
26.
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Read more articles by Diane Egner.
Diane Egner is a community leader and award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience reporting and writing about the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She serves on the boards of the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications Advisory Council, The Institute for Research in Art (Graphicstudio, the Contemporary Art Museum, and USF’s Public Art Program) Community Advisory Council, Sing Out and Read, and StageWorks Theatre Advisory Council. She also is a member of Leadership Florida and the Athena Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in journalism, she won the top statewide award for editorial writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors while at The Tampa Tribune and received special recognition by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists for creative work as Content Director at WUSF Public Media. Past accomplishments and community service include leadership positions with Tampa Tiger Bay Club, USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy (WLP), Alpha House of Tampa Bay, Awesome Tampa Bay, Florida Kinship Center, AIA Tampa Bay, Powerstories, Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Diane and her husband, Sandy Rief, live in Tampa.