About the blog
Greater Greater Washington is a community-driven media site and advocacy organization that builds communities to discuss and advocate around urbanism in the Washington, DC metro area. We write about the many forces influencing our region and how those relate to the built environment, especially around transportation and housing/land use, and also including politics, history, environmental sustainability, and more.
History
In 2008, David Alpert started a blog to generate conversation about how decisions were made about the development he was seeing across the city and region. The community of readers and writers grew, and in 2011 a small group of committed volunteer writers formed an Editorial Board to help edit the growing number of volunteer contributions, provide strategic guidance, and create opportunities for this growing community to connect in person.
In 2015 a serendipitous connection to the Open Philanthropy Project created an opportunity for GGWash to grow. Through a multi-year grant from the Open Philanthropy Project, GGWash has been able to invest in its organizational capacity and launch an advocacy program focused on housing affordability and equitable development.
What began as a completely volunteer project has grown into a community-driven nonprofit organization with two full-time editorial staff members, more than 150 volunteers, and a community of readers and commenters who number around 140,000 every month — all committed to creating a growing and inclusive Washington region.
You can see our current contributing writers here.
Our mission, content philosophy and priorities
The publication’s mission derives from the Greater Greater Washington mission statement:
Greater Greater Washington is a volunteer-driven, nonprofit organization that brings people together online and offline to discuss, organize, and advocate for an inclusive, diverse, growing Washington region where all people can choose to live in walkable urban communities.”
GGWash fulfills this mission through multiple separate avenues, including the publication and the policy team.
The publication best fulfills this mission as an entry point to urbanism and the GGWash community. It does this by introducing residents to urbanist news, ideas, and concepts, and giving them the information they need to engage on these issues.
GGWash defines cities broadly to include the entire metro region, and in particular “walkable urban places” in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, which we believe should be strengthened and expanded, and new ones created.
Urbanism is not binary, but a continuum. Some places are very urban, while others with many suburban characteristics nevertheless are trying to attain some qualities of urbanism, such as walkability or multi-family housing.
What we do
The GGWash blog publishes advocacy journalism, defined as: Fair, transparent journalism that is based in facts, but comes from an explicit shared understanding of what is “good.”
Our lens: As an urbanist publication, we explicitly seek a walkable, transit-oriented, sustainable, and equitable future for our region. That is the “lens” by which we approach our journalism. But as a publication (by this we mean our editorial department), we don’t start from the point of advocating for specific policy solutions, nor do we campaign for specific candidates (endorsements are made by a separate committee). Instead, we seek out facts, truth, and a diversity of opinions within this lens.
Current editorial priorities
The Editorial Board has set the following priorities for expanding coverage at GGWash:
- Buses
- Equity
- Environmental sustainability
- Local elections
We’re also trying to bolster our coverage of issues affecting communities in certain geographic areas:
- East of the Anacostia River in DC
- Prince George’s County, Maryland
- Montgomery County, Maryland
- Alexandria, Virginia
- Fairfax County, Virginia
Interested in writing for us?
We’d love to have you! You can find more about the criteria for our posts and the writing process here.
Have a question that isn’t answered here? Email info@ggwash.org.
Editorial process
GGWash takes journalistic integrity and accuracy very seriously. Our posts are written by volunteer contributors in addition to our full-time professional journalists. Whether written by volunteers or professionals, we do our best to ensure that everything that goes onto the site is accurate, fair, and approachable. Read our editorial policy here.
Each piece that goes on the site is edited for clarity, accuracy, and style by our editors, who in turn rely on our network of journalism and urbanism experts to review content and make sure we aren’t missing anything. Our Edit Board advises us on editorial direction.
Types of posts
GGWash publishes six broad categories of content, all of which must be clearly labeled.
News and analysis: A factual, reported article written without a specific policy agenda, by someone who does not have a personal or professional stake in the topic.*
- Written by editorial staffers, correspondents, paid freelancers, and some volunteers
- Should never be authored by GGWash policy staff or elected or appointed officials
- Articles should be based on facts and, while not engaging in both-sidesism, should consider opposing viewpoints fairly
- Conflict of interest standards for news pieces are strict: if a writer has a personal or professional stake* in the topic, the article should be labeled opinion.
Opinion: An article written with the intent to persuade.
- Written by volunteers, board members, and staff
- Like news articles, opinion should also be based on facts
- Unlike news articles, opinion writers can have a stake in the topic they are writing about, but that interest should be disclosed (for instance, if the author owns one of ten homes affected by a proposed zoning change, an article about that zoning change should be explicit about that fact)
- Op-eds are under the umbrella of journalism and have a time honored connection with newsrooms.
Advocacy: An article written for the purpose of furthering an organizational policy goal, or about GGWash’s advocacy work.
- Written by GGWash policy staff, board members, or GGWash partners (NOT editorial staff)
- Guidelines about advocacy content and direction are under the authority of the policy team
- Editorial staff can help facilitate posting of advocacy articles and edit for style, but should have no input on content
Endorsements: An article written during election season to communicate endorsement decisions made by the Elections Committee. This can also include Q&As run by the Elections Committee and other content from that committee related to elections.
- Written by the Elections Committee
- Editorial staff can help facilitate posting of endorsement articles and edit for style, but should have no input on content
About GGWash: An article written to communicate about job postings, style guide updates, fundraising, events, and other general administrative topics.
- Written by GGWash staff or board members
Roundups: Breakfast Links, National Links, and events posts.
*What is a personal or professional stake? We like to think of this as having skin in the game: if an issue affects you, your employer or your loved ones specifically, you have a stake in it.
- This includes: stories that specifically impact your job, family, home, or institutions to which you belong; and issues around which you advocate, either for your job or in your spare time.
- This does NOT include: stories that impact you because you live in the region or in a general area, or because you belong to a particular identity group.
- Some examples for illustrative purposes:
- Someone who lives in a condominium can write about condo associations, but shouldn’t write a news/analysis article about their own condo association.
- Someone who spends time advocating for slower speed limits in their neighborhood shouldn’t write a news/analysis article about a policy change around those speed limits.
- Someone whose organization has conducted a survey shouldn’t write a news/analysis article about that survey.
Endorsements and political activity
GGWash is a 501(c)4 organization, which means we occasionally take political stances and advocate for certain urbanist issues and candidates for elected office. Here’s what political activity is permitted. Editorial staff, which is separate from GGWash’s advocacy staff, strives to avoid conflicts of interest and discloses those that are unavoidable, as per our editorial policy.
All endorsements are decided by our volunteer Elections Committee. The Board of Directors, Editorial Board, and other volunteer committees can give input on endorsement decisions but do not determine them.
Funding and editorial independence
GGWash is a nonprofit with multiple sources of revenue — including donations, grants and advertisers — as well as a rich community of volunteers.
While we value all members of the GGWash community, our news judgment and editorial direction are separate and independent from our funders, members of our Board of Directors, and members of our Advocacy and Elections committees. Donors, advertisers, and board members will receive no preferential coverage, and should be aware that we may publish content with which they disagree. Editorial copy is never shared with donors, advertisers, or board members in advance. If we write about our funders or board members, we will disclose those relationships.
We do accept support for coverage of particular topics (i.e. grants and underwriting), but those funders have no oversight over the resulting content, and GGWash maintains full editorial control. In these instances, content will be clearly labeled.
Questions and corrections
If you would like to request a correction or have a question about one of our posts, please email info@ggwash.org.