Corinne Colbert is the co-founder and editor in chief of the Athens County Independent in southeastern Ohio. Prior to launching the Independent in 2022, she was editor at the Athens News, an alternative newsweekly, but was fired from that job eight months into her tenure for warning readers about misleading advertising in the publication. Her tweets about being fired went viral, inspiring a crowdfunding campaign that raised $18,000 to launch an independent nonprofit news organization in Athens County.  Her four-decade career also includes work in nonprofit communications and marketing, association publications, project management and consulting and teaching technical writing to engineering students.