Hi, we’re Mónica and Anika (yes, our names rhyme), and today we’re launching The Evergrey, a local media project to help Seattleites make the most of their city. We’re starting out with a daily email newsletter that connects locals to this place we call home. Our goal is to explain how the city is changing, bring together people with different perspectives and highlight communities and fun things to do that will help you live like you live here.
Want to get The Evergrey newsletter? Sign up today and we’ll see you in your inbox in the morning!
We love Seattle. It’s a beautiful, creative place where people are curious and passionate about what’s around them. There’s so much to explore in this city, and we want to help people find their own ways to feel powerful here.
Seattle is also changing really fast in ways that feel personal. It feels like the right time to come together to talk about where the city’s headed.
Maybe it’s the length of your commute, a sense that your neighborhood is different, or concerns about whether your voice is being considered in how the city defines itself. What is Seattle becoming, and how does each of us find our place here? Whether you’ve been here 20 years, 10 years or one year, these are the kinds of questions we keep hearing from Seattleites we talk to, and these are the questions we want to help answer.
So what makes The Evergrey different?
First off, we have a bias: We want Seattle to be a more exciting, accessible and inclusive city for everyone.
Second, whenever we can, we’re going to help people act on what they learn. That means that when we share a story or someone’s point of view, we’re also going to tell people who to talk to, where to go and how to get involved.
Finally, we believe that enjoying our city is a big part of what helps us love it and care for it. We want to help Seattleites find ways to really love their city and build meaningful connections with their neighbors, so that they feel invested in Seattle and empowered to play a part in shaping its future.
How will you know this is working?
If someone tells us, “I checked out this thing I had never heard about because of you” or “I didn’t understand or care about this issue before The Evergrey explained it to me,” we know we’re doing something right.We’ve been in beta for the past month and have learned so much from our readers. Apart from their suggestions and feedback, several of them have told us that The Evergrey is helping them feel more tied to Seattle. One reader wrote: “I love my city and you’re helping me to rediscover it all over again. It’s hard to imagine that I could love it any more, but you’re making that possible.” That’s a great starting place for the kind of impact we hope The Evergrey can have.
How did you end up doing this?
Anika: Mónica and I met through a mutual friend (thanks, Amanda!) soon after I moved to Seattle almost two years ago. We started chatting about life, journalism and the city. Soon, we started having more conversations that ended with “What if…?”
The next thing we knew, we’d thrown together a pitch deck and started brainstorming ways to build a new media project in Seattle. We talked with a few people, and the place that really stuck out to us was WhereBy.Us. We shared the same vision about what local media could be, and we’d already drawn a lot of inspiration from The New Tropic — the first WhereBy.Us site (The Evergrey is the second). With their help, we did a bunch of research in Seattle, talking to dozens of locals about how the city is growing and changing around them. From there, The Evergrey was born.
Wait, so who are you?
Mónica: I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, grew up in Somersworth, New Hampshire and became who I am here in Seattle. The people I’ve met here have taught me to mine my curiosity for all it’s worth and I’m endlessly grateful for that. Seattle is where I met my husband, bought my house, and am now raising my two young kids. As for the resume, I’ve been a Seattle journalist for most of my 10 years here, and the stories only get more interesting.
Anika: I grew up in Eastern North Carolina and only recently realized how challenging it has been to balance so many different identities — American, Southern, Indian, Kenyan (my parents were born there) and Canadian (my mom grew up there). Since then, I’ve lived in other cities, but it wasn’t until I moved to Seattle that I found a place I really wanted to belong to. The city is changing a lot and I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in, but I’m excited to have finally found communities I want to be a part of. More on my journalism experience here.
How can I get involved with The Evergrey?
First, you can sign up for our newsletter here. Then, you should tell us what you think! Although we’re officially out of our beta testing period today, we’ll never stop listening and learning from our readers to help create Seattle’s best, most useful resource for how to really live like we live here.
We’ll see you in your inbox!
– Mónica Guzmán and Anika Anand
