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The Lightship
A lightship holds steady in turbulent waters, warning sailors of dangerous reefs or rocks, of fog and storms — anchored in one spot they cast light where it is most needed. Lightships aid seafarers in deep, dark waters where shore-based warning systems like lighthouses can’t reach.
They help keep other ships safe on the open ocean.
The Lightship blog is where one journalist flexes her authenticity, leaning into the illuminating metaphor — sharing experiences, insights, questions, research, analysis and lessons on the wildly exasperating issues of modern news, media and technology. The fog. The rocks. The reefs of today.
Founded in September 2025 by Audrey Korte, this platform experiments with a hybrid approach: posts that blend hard news reporting skills with personal narratives, analysis with commentary, experience-based storytelling with research and expert insight, all with the author’s eye for investigating problems while examining ways to think about and approach solutions.
She writes candidly about what has been, at times, an inspiring and uplifting ride with modern journalism, too — despite storms and strife, journalism and related work and experiences inform, inspire, intrigue and illuminate her path.
Her experiences are unique but speak to issues being seen, studied, and talked about by scores of American journalists, communications professionals, researchers and creators and by a growing number of readers, viewers and subscribers.
The Lightship launched after Audrey lost her job at the Wisconsin State Journal over an AI incident she’s publicly addressed.
Rather than sit in the uncertainty, embarrassment and confusion that came from the costly mess, she spent time planning to address the issue publicly — talking to experts, documenting what happened, reading up on the related issues, seeking insight and perspective from a lawyer, a couple of trusted journalists and communication experts.
She spent time coming to terms with her shocking new reality, thinking deeply about the questions that may come, looking closely at what related evidence and documentation was available after losing access to company software, devices and accounts used at the time. She spent days writing about what happened.
She built this platform to first address what happened but then immediately pivot to other topics of writing and analysis that leave plenty of space for journalistic evidence-gathering, solid sourcing, verification and background, without sacrificing personality, commentary, life-experience and shareable insights to inform, teach or warn others.
With an eye toward building new media skills, experimenting with other styles and finding new audiences the site also had one goal that was relatively simple: keep writing.
The posts here range from deeply sourced analysis to personal essays, from solutions journalism to career cultural commentary. What binds them together isn’t topic or format—it’s commitment to a few simple principles:
• Source your claims
• Own your opinions
• Own your mistakes
• Share what you learn
• Keep going
That first week tested all of those principles.
The launch went sideways from hacking — the timing couldn’t have been worse. And the response was: document it, learn from it, share it, keep building.
That’s the work. Now the site is building and rebuilding to prove: that rigorous reporting doesn’t require corporate newsrooms. That accountability doesn’t require institutional power. That you can lose your job, get hacked during your launch week, spend weeks recovering from security breaches, and still do work around journalism that matters — if you’re willing to be honest about all of it.
The Lightship claims to be about transparency and accountability in journalism so it has to model that in its own operations. When things go wrong, you don’t hide it. You report it. You explain what happened, what you learned, what you’re doing differently.
Then you keep going.
The Promise
The Lightship will keep publishing: reported investigations, personal narratives, solutions journalism, cultural analysis, whatever pushes the right buttons and serves readers well.
Every piece will be sourced. Any mistakes will be owned.
The work won’t always be pretty. The launches won’t always go as planned. The technology will sometimes betray you. The hackers will sometimes win a round.
But the light stays on.
The Lightship holds steady in rough waters. It casts light where it’s needed. It warns of danger ahead.
That’s the mission—even when storms nearly sink the ship.
Especially then.
The site is live now, properly secured, actually functional. The posts are publishing but still admittedly sporadic as 186 accounts are being reconfigured and secured post hack — everything that could possibly relate to the site or its owners work from Facebook to Google Workspace, from Mac Desktop to iPad to iPhone. We’re building the ship while sailing it.
The conversations are happening. The work continues. The Lightship sets anchor and its beacon keeps shining.
Thanks for being part of the journey.
Meet Audrey
A Life in Motion
Born at Fort Riley in Kansas in 1981 and raised as an Army brat and Episcopal clergy kid, I had an upbringing like no other. Dad's family, a large Roman Catholic crew from Emporia and Arkansas City, grew up poor but determined and he and all six siblings went on to do great things. It's a family story of service to community and country that many in the Midwest could relate to -- an American tale of determination, of pulling a family out of poverty that many of us in 2025 long for but find difficult to bring to fruition in the face of the economics and corruption we now face.
My mother, a lifelong Anglican raised in the Episcopal Church, grew up in Newport, Rhode Island and I consider both Kansas and Rhode Island home as much as one can who has moved as many times as I have. She likes to tell a story of running off to Kansas for college as a young woman because her best friend was going there. She went on an adventure to the middle of America and met my dad within the first month she was at the University of Kansas, where he too was a student.
Dad joined the Army wanting to see the world. Imagine his thrill when he was posted to Fort Riley -- a couple hours from home. Hah. But that's where I was born. I wasn't raised in Kansas. Soon we were off to Army bases in Kentucky and Maryland. Then we headed for New England where I spent my formative middle school and high school years.
I spent much of my childhood along the East Coast, particularly in Massachusetts. We spent four great years in Cambridge. I later lived in Northfield and Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
By age eight, I was sitting in on graduate school classes in theology and history while my mother completed her Master of Divinity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and worked toward ordination at a time when women's ordination was new and controversial. Meanwhile, Dad—a career Army officer who would retire as a major—was navigating everything from the Gulf War to assignments with the National Guard and DEA.
I've always been anchored in Newport, Rhode Island, where my mother's family has lived since the 1600s. I spent summers at the Episcopal Conference Center in Pascoag, Rhode Island first as a camper and later a camp counselor. Over the years I've lived in Middletown, Newport, Warren and Providence, Rhode Island.
In 1995 God decided I was not to be an only child after all and my mother had my little brother, Adam when I was an eighth-grader. He was born in Providence.
We also lived in Woodbridge and then Weston, Connecticut.
I did a nontraditional high school -- attended boarding school at Northfield Mount Hermon in Northfield, Mass. at 13 -- I lived with 1,100 students from over 60 countries, and spent time abroad in France and Türkiye.
I rowed crew all four years, and in 1998, I was the stroke for a winning team at the Head of the Charles regatta in Cambridge—my favorite memory of rowing to this day, a perfect team moving in unison.
After graduating in 1999, I headed west on a Division I rowing scholarship to the University of Kansas. I was on fire academically—triple major, 3.89 GPA, scores of awards—but a shoulder injury ended my athletic career. Unable to afford out-of-state tuition without the scholarship, I left.
It would be almost twenty years before I completed my B.A.
I spent some time in Bangor, Maine and a couple years in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in my twenties at Columbia University trying to go to school while ill. It did not work out in the end.
The Long Road Back
In 2005, after years of unexplained symptoms, I was diagnosed with advanced Lyme disease. I'm certain I contracted it in 2001 while spending a summer in Weston, Connecticut—rowing and nannying for wealthy locals. That summer everything changed: I dropped forty pounds in ten weeks, developed rashes, headaches, light sensitivity, and plenty more. Doctors downplayed my symptoms. A few determined the problems must be in my head.
In 2005, a spinal tap proved they certainly were not.
What followed were years of doctor's visits, hospitalizations, and a brutal lesson in how stigmatized and misunderstood Lyme disease is—and how unequal we are in the eyes of medicine. I tried returning to school at Columbia University in 2007, but struggled with mobility, severe pain, joint and heart problems, and recurring insomnia. My cognition, focus, and memory took a hard hit. I left feeling like an utter failure.
The next seven years were rough. Horrific at times. In 2014, I nearly died from neglect and malpractice during a gallbladder surgery when the surgeon left seventeen stones behind. They began to shred my bile duct and pancreas. For three days I screamed and cried for help. The doctor decided I was a drug seeker, sent me to a psychiatrist, and tried to discharge me—literally shaking his finger in my face and saying, "Stop it. You are being ridiculous." He said I was disturbing the other patients with my crying. Luckily, a bold nurse stood in his way and kept the guy from sending me home. A day later they were wheeling me in for emergency surgery on Easter weekend. Another surgeon took the reins. He was great. I recall him saying it hurt to operate on me, the damage was so severe from years of harsh and difficult medications destroying my gut.
Years later, after a more than decade-long battle against Lyme and co-infections, I clawed my way back and graduated from Wichita State—beginning my career in my mid-thirties. I graduated from Wichita State University in 2019 then taught public speaking for two years as a graduate teaching assistant.
Making Up for Lost Time
Determined to make up for lost time, I've done just about everything imaginable to live a bold, creative, and curious life. I developed and co-chaired an international women's media and leadership conference in Sierra Leone as part of a fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of State's Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program.
The project took twenty-six months due to the pandemic, but I got it done. It burned me out, though I was elated to see it through. I am looking for more opportunities to do media work back in West Africa. It was just the coolest experience.
Then I headed for Wisconsin which was mostly good. While the last couple of months have been tough—I survived a painful, humbling, and lonely experience in my latest role that resulted in my being discharged by my former employer—I am grateful to be writing and researching again.
I've publicly addressed what happened, explaining and apologizing for my errors, and I'm leaving that event in the past.
This is a time to lean into the articles and interviews that intrigue me, while calling upon the skills and practices I know best.
The Chippewa Herald, where I was the only reporter in the news department, secured first place in General Excellence, a prestigious award that acknowledges outstanding quality in all facets of print and digital newspaper publishing this year and clinched first for Best Headlines. My coverage of 2024 campaign visits to the Chippewa Valley by former Vice President Kamala Harris and then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance earned me first place for Localized National Story in the Wisconsin Newspaper Association's Better Newspaper Contest.
I won first place for General News Story in 2023 on a Dunn County referendum that asked the federal government to nationalize health care, and won second place awards for Video in 2023 and 2024.
But it's more important to recognize all that I learned about myself, reporting and the state of news in 2025 from that experience.
What to Expect from The Lightship
The Lightship is a platform with which to experiment—altering the focus, voice, style, and purpose of each post, but mostly just having a conversation with readers. I don't like to be bored or boxed in, which is why I prefer a broad range of topics. One week it may be a piece on AI (written on it, not with it); the next, a look at how newsrooms use social media to their benefit or detriment.
There will be recorded interview clips and original photos, regular posts on social media, and whatever newsworthy topics grab my attention—evidence-focused with interviews and expert analysis. Others will be personal: fun, fresh, full of metaphor, or straightforward and fact-based. I make time for both.
I'm using the rest of 2025 to hold fast to my purpose and long-term dreams while pivoting to more personal, community-driven writing—less restrictive than news, with far fewer corporate politics. I'm truly excited to return to writing that comes from inspiration, experience, or passion but builds upon strong research, interviewing, and reporting skills. Some of my best work comes when an issue pushes my buttons, as I learned as a columnist and opinion editor at Wichita State.
Free of the confusion and uncertainty of corporate newsrooms, I appreciate having control of my time, training, daily work, and my own content for the first time in years. I'm relying on myself to get things done but asking for help when needed—from those who are actually up to the task.
I'm determined not to dim my light for long, or to stand idly by when another tries to blow my candle out.
While my career has taken a hit in 2025, my intent, passion, ambition, and determination can never be stolen. I remain intent on becoming the best journalist, storyteller, and human being I can.
