Depending on the size of your community, it can be challenging to keep up with current events. Rob Blatt knows. He’s the founder of The Briefly, which Katie and I devour with more enthusiasm than breakfast. “Without local news you’re essentially lost one mile from your home,” Rob says. And in this edition of Doing What Works, you’ll find out what you really lose when a business closes, for example -- and what a community gains by even failed attempts to keep it open. Rob notices and appreciates where he lives, and in The Briefly he’s built a community of people who do the same.

Here are your show notes…

You don’t have to live in New York to find The Briefly [https://www.thebriefly.com/] fascinating!

The Briefly is a passion project for Rob Blatt [https://www.robblatt.com/].

The Grand Prospect Hall’s commercial is a classic. Want to take a look [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYDsZY3Ns-g]? Here’s a summary of the fight to save it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTHlTO0bEg].

It was in The Briefly that Katie discovered the Subway Social Club [https://www.instagram.com/subwaysocialclub/] -- “normalizing conversation on public transit” -- and now she and Subway Social’s Claire Feuer are friends. Hi, Claire!

Want the local news where you live [https://patch.com/]? Want to be a more informed voter [https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page]? Want a story about a baby goat that made its way to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway? Stick with the show all the way to the end for that one!