Photo by Rob Page III

By now, we’ve all heard about how shops in Georgetown, one of D.C.’s whitest, wealthiest neighborhoods, use the GroupMe app to report “suspicious” people — most of whom are black.

The Washington Post’s story on the practice garnered thousands of comments, sparking yet another online debate over race and policing over the past few days. The Post followed up with an even more alarming piece on Oct. 16 about a man who was arrested in Georgetown wrongfully after being flagged by an app user.

But the Post’s coverage is a few months too late. I reported in depth on this issue in August for The Georgetowner, a biweekly local newspaper. My story came out after months of compiling research and interviews and pushing the paper’s editorial staff, which has traditionally focused on hyper-local news and lifestyle, to publish the story. After it was published, I faced backlash from leaders in the Georgetown community who publicly questioned my integrity and journalistic ethics.

Not only is the Post’s story, written by Terrence McCoy, strikingly similar to the one I wrote in August, but it also fails to report on the situation accurately by not mentioning my investigation for The Georgetowner.

When I contacted the Post to ask why my story was not mentioned, Sydney Trent, the paper’s senior editor for social issues, responded, “Terrence McCoy was tipped about this story independently by someone who also gave him access to the app. We are aware of your story, but it is not where he got the idea.”

I replied, in part saying that McCoy’s reporting leaves out a key detail in telling the story; that The Georgetowner’s initial report made a huge impact locally.

Importantly, for example, the Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID) started reviewing GroupMe because of The Georgetowner’s report.

McCoy writes on this trend:

“A review by the Business Improvement District of all the messages since January — more than 3,000 — revealed that nearly 70 percent of those people were black.”

This review didn’t exist when I wrote my story, though my colleagues and I found similar numbers tallying messages up by hand.

Here’s more from McCoy on BID reform ideas that have come since The Georgetowner story was published:

“Officials with the Georgetown Business Improvement District said they’re aware of what they call ‘questionable postings.’ So they have passed out brochures establishing guidelines on how to use the application to communicate concern without offending.”

Those guidelines hadn’t been proposed when I wrote my story. McCoy discusses BID’s proposal to train users in his second article on the topic:

“[The Georgetown Business Improvement District], he [chief executive Joe Sternlieb] said, has held meetings to train people about sensitive use and have kicked out those who didn’t comply. He said that objectionable postings have constituted only a small percentage of the correspondence, which stretches across thousands of messages.”

In the weeks following the release of The Georgetowner’s August 5 issue, you could see changes within app itself, too. Police officers asking people to explain suspicious behavior, retail employees calling out users for insensitive posts, racially or otherwise, and white people being flagged as suspicious by users.

But The Georgetowner’s first story on the app didn’t just change GroupMe. It also changed the atmosphere in the town, making people less willing to talk openly to the press. McCoy reports:

“People who know about the group are nervous to talk about it. District police declined numerous requests for comment. Some retailers wouldn’t discuss the group. Others would, but only on the condition of anonymity.”

I encountered some of what McCoy describes here but, by-and-large, people, including police officers, were willing to talk openly and honestly with me about the app.

I spoke extensively with MPD Officer Antonial Atkins, someone who describes the app as his idea, about what McCoy calls “Operation GroupMe.” (I had never heard that phrase until I read his story.) I even talked about it very briefly with the Second District MPD Commander Melvin Gresham. After my story was published, however, the police went silent on The Georgetowner, the Post and any other news outlet asking about GroupMe.

When I talked to store employees this summer, they were also surprisingly candid with me. One told me that black people are “more obvious” when they steal. Another said that they practice “a little bit of profiling” to spot shoplifters, while yet another noted, “a lot of the known thieves are black.” All this despite knowing I was a reporter covering the app. Surely, the people who McCoy approached were more tight-lipped after reading my story in The Georgetowner.

Despite my argument that the Post’s story left out crucial details by failing to mention Georgetown’s reaction to my original story, Trent, the editor, replied, “After some discussion, we do not plan to reference your story.” She added, “Terry did not behave unethically in reporting the story on his own. His story is original, reflecting his own reporting and is not derivative of yours. We do not want to give an impression contrary to these facts,” closing with, “I do hope you understand our point of view.”

I never claimed that McCoy was acting unethically or that he did not do his own reporting on on this topic. I only pointed out a resemblance between his report and mine, and asked why he did not properly attribute the changes in Georgetown that he highlights in his story, like the BID’s steps to eliminate racial profiling from GroupMe, to The Georgetowner’s original piece.

I emailed her back making my argument one last time, closing with, “I understand your decision,” despite my frustration.

What I understand now, though, is that the Post’s reporting on the issue is inaccurate because it touches on the local impact of The Georgetowner’s story while intentionally leaving the smaller local paper’s name, and hard work, out of it.