Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:GGW is a shell of what it used to be. There’s a lot less content on the site now. I think they’ve hit some funding problems as the YIMBY movement became more progressive and started embracing things like rent control.
Yes, it's a bad sad to see their decline. I think the decline of blogs generally hurt them. Even disagreeing, I enjoyed the well-written articles and the old comment section. Good history lessons for those new to DC.
I disagree slightly in the exact issue: I think young urbanists (which I'm not) are interested in both YIMBY and progressive political views outside rent control and the such. GGWash tried generally (and failed many times) to restrict itself to housing issues. The demand just isn't there.
They have funding issues because Alpert turned off the money spigot when he left, and they can't count on the same 40 supporter lemmings to float them forever. They stopped accepting money directly from developers after (rightly) realizing it was a horrible look, though they're still clearly astroturfing for developers because their board is full of them. It's all a grift.
Most of their recurring donors were commenters and when they turned off comments because they got too lazy to continue to delete everything that was even mildly critical of GGW or their policies, those folks stopped donating at the same levels.
It started as a pro-transit, anti-highway expansion, and pro-TOD blog. It morphed into something else entirely that became so unappealing that it cause even Alpert to run away.
Unless Nadeau can get the council to agree to fund her GGW subsidy bill, I cannot imagine that they have more than a few years left with a business model where they rely on free labor for nearly all of their operations while whatever resources they have goes to their small group of paid labor who don’t produce anything.