When you live in Washington, D.C., it’s easy to think the whole city runs on politics. But spend any time here — especially in the fall, when the Capitals and the Commanders and half a dozen other teams are all playing at once — and you realize pretty quickly that sports is what actually brings people together.

That’s where my conversation with Jeff Dooley starts this week. Jeff is an editor at NOTUS, where he’s building a local news operation from scratch — covering DC sports, food, news, and arts and culture. He grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, where reading the Washington Post sports section gave him his first love of journalism. And now he’s helping build the kind of coverage he grew up with, for a city that is hungry for exactly that.

We talked about the Nationals this season — a team where fans, after years of a pretty aimless rebuild, finally have a reason to care again. We talked about the Commanders, the RFK site, and a new ownership group that’s making real investments that players and fans are actually noticing. And we talked about the bigger thing underneath all of it: the way local sports coverage is part of what holds a community together.

“To understand sports is to understand life and to understand human nature and decision making,” Jeff told me. I’ve been turning that line over ever since we recorded.

Jeff also gave listeners a preview of something I’m genuinely excited about: NOTUS is launching a free local newsletter at the end of July — delivered to your inbox every morning, covering DC news, sports, food, and more. You can sign up now on any article page at notus.org, and I’ve included the link in the show notes.

This is the final episode of our month-long NOTUS takeover of The Friday Reporter — and it’s been one of my favorite months of conversations in a long time. From Kadia and Paul to Deirdre to Jeff, every guest reminded me of what great journalism looks like when people actually care about the community they’re covering.

I’m so grateful to everyone at NOTUS for making this happen. And I’m grateful, as always, to you for listening.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

— Lisa