About Evergreene Digest
What We Are
Evergreene Digest is an on-line weekly journal of progress for the rest of us.
The vision for Evergreene Digest is to be the preferred one-stop on-line source for women, communities of color, working people, people with disabilities, veterans, youth, pacifists, GLBT, activists, spiritual seekers, progressives, environmentalists, youth, veterans, and other groups ignored by the mainstream media as legitimate audiences, sources, and subjects for the news.
Evergreene Digest does this by providing links to the websites of well over 475 publications and groups (like Sojourners, Common Cause, Slate, Arts & Letters Daily, WAMM, ISAIAH, American Politics Journal, Earth Justice, Veterans for Peace, Reporters Without Borders, Democracy Now, Huffington Post, TruthDig, Common Dreams, Axis of Logic, AlterNet, In These Times, Wellstone Action, Liberty Coalition, Daily Kos, Transit for Liveable Communities, and Amnesty International), highlighting over 200 articles a month on those websites.
Think of us as a cyberspace-based news clipping service.
We also present original material by authors, photographers, and other artists.
Why We Are
Getting alternative coverage of news and information is overwhelming for nearly all of us. But the Internet makes it possible to loosen the grip on big media by taking the news into our own hands. We readers-turned-reporters can restore integrity to the nation's single most vital conduit for democratic participation, our media. Hence, a web-based journal, Evergreene Digest.
So, why have yet another information source? One, because Evergreene Digest is designed especially for the busy person, easily accessible and navigable. Evergreene Digest arranges its contents in categories of reader interest. Begin reading by clicking on a category interest to you. Within each category you can either browse by publication or peruse the summaries of featured articles and click on "More..." as time and interest permit.
And two, it presents more in-depth background materials to give you a framework to better understand what is going on in the world and respond to it. Our purpose is to educate you and motivate you to take action. Evergreene Digest is more than a site with links to other sources, or a source of day-to-day news coverage.
Our History
Evergreene Digest (the name inspired by the book, The Greening of America and a nod to Minnesota's state tree, the Norway pine) began publication in March, 2006. It began as the collaborative effort of a group of half a dozen or so volunteers, parishioners at St. Joan of Arc Church, Minneapolis, MN. They came together in a shared belief that most times we citizens just aren't getting the whole story in the mainstream, corporate-controlled, and profit-based media. Either it ignores certain events, perspectives, or communities as legitimate sources and audiences for news or, if it does cover them, it spins the coverage so badly that the truth can't be recognized. Additionally, most of us want more than extremely condensed news stories and we want broader perspectives on the issues that interest us.
Originally we were a supplement to the St. Joan of Arc Church website. But in less than six months we had grown too controversial for Archdiocesan officials to handle, so we became an independent publication. Today the committee has grown to involve over thirty individuals. We have over 33,200 readers world-wide, 9,000 of whom visit our site daily.
Evergreene Digest, while a relatively new endeavor, is an important contribution to social justice and our need to know the truth. It will challenge you and make you ask questions. It's growing, evolving. Check us out.
Who We Are
While Evergreene Digest started out as a project of a small committee, on-going production is now largely carried out by Dave Culver and Mike Steigerwald. "Sometimes our hardest task is deciding which category to put an article into," says the site's designer, Dave Culver. His view is that the categories are all inter-related at the core anyway -- be it religion, economics, art, politics or any of the others. Read one and it leads you to the others.
Dave and Mike are highly educated with strong liberal arts educations. Both have a strong personal commitment to finding the truth behind the veneer of commercial media. According to Dave, "90% of what Evergreene Digest publishes is not even seen in the mainstream media."
Dave, who was born in La Crosse, WI, and grew up in Minneapolis, graduated from Marquette University with a BA in English and a minor in Speech and Education. His education was entirely in Catholic schools, mostly Jesuit-based. He "wouldn't trade a minute of it," he says, even while recognizing that such a broad education can sometimes be both a blessing and a curse. For Dave, "sometimes it's hard to really see the truth of what's going on and yet feel so helpless about it." Dave later obtained a degree in electronics from Dunwoody Institute (now Dunwoody College of Technology). He has had a career of teaching and training in speech, communications, management development, and quality improvement.
Mike wouldn't change a minute of his education either, even though, after 4th grade, his learning took place entirely in public schools. Mike was born in Troy, NY, but spent his childhood in Delaware and Pittsburgh. He went to high school in Ann Arbor, a school that has won awards for being one of the best in the nation. He then attended the University of Michigan where he earned a BS in Engineering and a MSE in Applied Mechanics, but with a strong emphasis in computer programming. Mike has had a career as a software engineer, computer programmer and currently web programmer.
Don't let that "engineer" title fool you though. Mike is a critical thinker and he is passionate about exposing the public to critical thinking. Thus, Evergreene Digest has a special category called Critical Thinking. Critical thinking is not encouraged in schools today, Mike says. "People should know that it's okay to ask questions." Evergreene Digest's goal is to empower readers to use critical thinking tools to recognize the truth in the midst of the propaganda.
