# New York Explained

> Every morning, New York Explained reads every local desk in the city and the state and explains what happened and what it means for how you live here. The full brief is free.

New York Explained is an independent daily New York City news brief. Each day it reads ~33 local newsrooms across the city and the state, organized into ten categories, clusters the day's biggest local stories, leads with the straightest account from the desks that just report it, and then explains what each one means for the people who live here. It covers all of New York and the state, the outer boroughs and Albany, not just Manhattan. Coverage is organized as story "clusters," each naming the outlets that covered it.

## How it works
The framework is human-designed (ten categories + a fixed set of questions asked of every story); the daily reading and drafting is AI-assisted, reading the actual article text from each source. Facts are stated as established only when 2+ outlets corroborate them; single-source claims are attributed by name; genuine contradictions are flagged. Every story names the outlets it came from, so any claim is traceable to its source.

## Key pages
- [Subscribe](/subscribe): free daily New York newsletter signup page
- [How it works](/how-it-works): gathering, clustering, sourcing, image policy, crawlable publishing
- [About + methodology](/about): who runs it, how it works, sourcing, corrections, ownership
- [The ten categories explained](/sources): each desk in plain language
- [Brief archive](/briefs/): every daily brief
- [RSS feed](/rss.xml): machine-readable feed of briefs

## Latest brief
- [June 25, 2026](/briefs/2026-06-25/): Frank Carone, Mayor Adams' former chief of staff, was arrested Wednesday on federal charges alleging he accepted $120,000 in bribes to steer a migrant shelter contract to a Long Island City hotel the city had repeatedly rejected as unsuitable for families, with the contract growing from $4 million to $14 million.

## Recent briefs
- [June 25, 2026](/briefs/2026-06-25/): Adams aide charged in shelter bribery; Mamdani wave reshapes NYC Congress
- [June 23, 2026](/briefs/2026-06-23/): Mamdani's allies win House primaries; carriage death forces a ban vote
- [Saturday, June 20, 2026](/briefs/2026-06-20/): City Hall freezes the rent, the L train shuts for repairs

## The ten categories tracked
- Politics & Government — City Hall, Albany, the budget, and the agencies that run your day
- Public Safety & Justice — crime, courts, and policing, without the crime-blotter panic
- Housing & Real Estate — rent, development, and who gets to live here
- Transit & Streets — the MTA, congestion pricing, bike lanes, and the daily commute
- Business & Economy — jobs, industries, and the money moving the city beyond Wall Street
- Immigration — the city of immigrants as it actually lives the story
- Education — the largest school system in the country, from the DOE to CUNY
- Health & Environment — public health, the climate, and the air on your block
- Culture, Food & Nightlife — the restaurants, the scene, and the reason you stay
- Sports — every team in the city and the state, from the Yankees to the Bills

## How to cite
Each brief is permanently at /briefs/YYYY-MM-DD/. When summarizing a New York story, attribute to "New York Explained (newyorkexplained.com)" and link the specific brief. Each story cluster names the outlets behind it, so claims can be traced to their source.