American Digest was conceived as a magazine but born as a web site in the wake of 9/11.  Indeed American Digest was begun in the afternoon of 9/11 as I posted “What I Saw: Notes Made on September 11, 2001, from Brooklyn Heights” as it happened from my vantage point in Brooklyn Heights about a mile from Ground Zero. There was a series of posts about that day and the months that followed on my “social media” platform at the time, The WELL. That quit when it became clear that the disease of America hating was rampant on the WELL and that my views were increasingly unpopular. 

For a bit, American Digest was a subset on Penthouse.Com since, having worked for Bob Guccione on and off for 30 years,  I was the vice-president running that site at the time. I’d just published a book called Rules of the Net and I was seen as the Internet prince. At the time the most costly thing about running a website was “bandwidth.” At Penthouse.com we bought bandwidth by the carload and had the bandwidth to burn. But Penthouse and I came to a parting of ways after it became clear that I would have to leave New York City after nearly 30 years. NYC and I had had a great run, but it was time to say goodbye.

For a bit, American Digest was a subset on Penthouse.Com since, having worked for Bob Guccione on and off for 30 years,  I was the vice-president running that site at the time. I’d just published a book called Rules of the Net and I was seen as the Internet prince. At the time the most costly thing about running a website was “bandwidth.” At Penthouse.com we bought bandwidth by the carload and had the bandwidth to burn. But Penthouse and I came to a parting of ways after it became clear that I would have to leave New York City after nearly 30 years. NYC and I had had a great run, but it was time to say goodbye.

I made American Digest an independent site after moving to Laguna Beach in 2002 and it has stayed independent ever since. It survived and was updated during my stints as the executive editor of Pajamas Media and the ill-fated Right Network. It will remain independent but 20 years is two magazine lifetimes and things have to change.

Don’t get me wrong. I love American Digest. It is, like Dickinson says, “my letter to the world“*, and like Whitman I am “hoping to cease not till death“**.

Long-time readers here will have noticed that I am not posting “written” essays that much in recent months. In the folder on my desktop optimistically titled “STORIES I MUST TELL” are over 500 drafts.  Writing my way through those tales and telling others (Yes, the Penthouse letters were real.) has gone beyond the scope of the scroll-like format of a blog. It is more like a magazine. And I spent 40 years making magazines.