The path to “greater” is sometimes paved with potholes and pandemics

Hi, my name is George and I’m the managing editor for the GGWash publication. I’ve had a few jobs at the organization since I started back in 2019: from a correspondent, to lead editor, to the position I am in now. Of all of them, however, this one I am most proud and excited about.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the future of our region is at stake depending on the decisions residents, advocates and legislators make regarding urbanism. Will transit recover and be accessible and affordable for all? Can we grow, replenish and preserve our housing stock, while making sure people of all incomes can afford to live in Greater Washington? How does bike, bus, and pedestrian infrastructure fit into our plans for a more multimodal region? Oh, and did we mention climate change? If you’ve been feeling a lot of WTF energy about which issues to focus on, you are not alone. The truth is we need to center them all.

That is why GGWash’s publication is so important. For more than 13 years we’ve tried to live up to our mission of informing and engaging people about urbanism: geographic, economic, political, and social forces affecting the built environment.

We’ve been working hard. But as with so many of you, 2020 brought some unexpected challenges — for our publication, our organization, and our region.

2020: the year that changed it all

I can’t imagine all the changes and hurdles you went through during 2020, but I can shed a little light on what it’s been like at our organization. In March, my partner and I were in Los Angeles on vacation (and low key editing some articles for the blog) as the city shut down around us because of the coronavirus. By the time we returned to DC, big decisions were being made, and like many companies, GGWash fumbled into remote work and life. We consider ourselves lucky as many others in the region still had to get to work using transit that was severely cut. But a larger question still loomed for us. How would a deadly pandemic impact our co-workers, our community, our readers? We started to find out quickly.

Our publication, and our organization as a whole, is a mostly volunteer-driven affair. It was designed that way. Only two of our (current) six full-time staff members work for the publication, and for about eight months last year, there was only one. When the pandemic hit, we found ourselves in a difficult position.

We no longer had a full-time editor, I was trying to split my time between writing and editing, many of our steadfast volunteer contributors found themselves overwhelmed by the demands of remote work, child care, and caring for sick relatives, and we still had 80 articles to produce and write each month. Understandably, for our contributors, spending volunteer hours to write amazing articles was not as much of a priority as staying alive, schooling their kids, or caring for neighbors or loved ones.

We were very fortunate to be able to rely for a few months on our founder, David Alpert’s prolific writing ability (he wrote 57 articles on his own last year!) But when he decided to step back, after 12 years, from running Greater Greater Washington, we were back to square one and we had to get creative.

The rise of reposts

With fewer people able to write original content, we pulled a lot of stories last year out of our archives.

Our reposts were and are a godsend for us, as they allow us to bring back some of our all time favorite articles for newer readers to experience. Last year our reposts were quite popular, many times topping our most viewed list for the week.

Despite these challenges GGWash published nearly 1,000 articles (including Breakfast links) about regional public policy and the built environment that were viewed over 3 million times. Here are some highlights from the year.

115 volunteer contributors wrote for the publication in 2020, almost a quarter of which for the first time.

We are proud of the way we handled a difficult situation, but we also knew we needed to move the publication beyond just treading water, so we turned to you all.

A new addition to the editorial team

You all delivered and helped us raise almost $25,000 to support a dedicated writer for the publication. Thank you so much! By October, we were lucky enough to welcome our second, and latest member of the editorial team, Libby Solomon.

Part of Libby’s salary comes from our underwriting agreement with the Tysons Partnership and the rest comes from you all. I seriously cannot thank you enough for your support.

For the very first time, you all have made it possible for us to have a generalist reporter to cover “things that come up” and we couldn’t be more excited.

But we do need your help to be able to keep her position. Can you match our investment in this publication by joining, renewing, or upgrading your membership in the GGWash Neighborhood?

Will you join the GGWash Neighborhood?

We’d also love to hear what kinds of things you’d like to see Libby write about. You can send us an email at info@ggwash.org or leave a suggestion in the comments.

What’s coming next for GGWash?

Libby and I are working to continue the professionalization of the publication that our former editors, our amazing edit board and volunteers have been pushing towards. Stay tuned for some announcements on that front soon.

But our role will always be to inform, engage, and sometimes enrage (sorry) you, our readers, and bring people into the conversation about what’s going on in the region.

We are grateful every day to be able to do local journalism, and to get to focus on such intersectional issues. We hope to continue to earn your trust. We are one of the few media organizations that can truly say we are reader and community driven. A small donation today can help us to continue this work.