I'm the managing editor of Payload (www.payloadspace.com), a media brand built from the ground up to chronicle the next chapter of space commercialization and exploration. We aim to inform, first and foremost, but we also aim to educate and entertain. Payload serves a highly concentrated audience of decision-makers across commercial, civil, and military space.

We reach our audience through multiple digital channels, but primarily lean on a newsletter-first strategy, and we put out three properties: Payload, Pathfinder, and Parallax. The flagship Payload sends daily to 16,000+ space cadets (aka executives, founders, engineers, scientists, policymakers, and other professionals working in space). Pathfinder, a podcast hosted by yours truly, and Parallax, a space science newsletter penned by our very own Rachael Zisk, are weekly verticals with audiences above 1,000.

As managing editor, I lead the Payload newsroom, which is growing quickly and will soon be dispersed across three continents (unfortunately, we don't yet have anyone on the team who is based on low Earth orbit). Though we are growing, we are still a lean, mean fighting machine. I'm incredibly proud of the newsroom, our operational tempo, our volume of output, and the quality of our work. With just a few employees, we've published nearly 333 daily newsletters, 650 web articles, and 40 podcasts, and quickly grown to become one of the most popular, trusted, and witty voices in the space industry.

No two days are the same, but it typically involves me waking up at around 6AM. Because I'm based in Central time zone and Payload operates on Eastern and publishes at 9am ET, I have to get up a bit earlier. That's ok because I'm an early riser. In the early AM on weekdays, my coworker Rachael and I check to make sure the newsletter copy looks good and that we've implemented all edits. We'll also do a news sweep for anything that happened overnight. As anyone reading this likely already knows, space doesn't adhere to a 9-5 schedule; it never sleeps; and it is as global an industry as they come.

From 6-8AM, we'll work on setting up the newsletter, sending ourselves tests of the email to make sure everything's up to snuff, and then we'll publish. The next few hours are "free play," involving calls with sources, internal Payload meetings, the occasional coffee with a space peep in Austin, and podcast recordings.

The newsroom will aims to have our story slate for the subsequent day's newsletter set in stone by around 1 or 2pm ET. If we're being honest, that's more of a nominal deadline than it is a real one. The space news cycle is fast-moving and unpredictable (see 'space doesn't sleep' above) so sometimes we don't have a perfect sense of the lineup by the afternoon. And that's ok. We also have a heavy focus on the business, economics, and investing landscape of space, and companies frequently report earnings after the market closes. Flexibility is built into our daily process.

Fortunately, because we've become an authority in the industry, we now frequently receive inbound tips and news announcements. This is super helpful, as it lets us plan ahead and stay proactive with our publishing workflows, rather than reactive.

We aim to have the next day's newsletter draft done and dusted by 6PM Eastern, when it is then shipped off to our proofreader and copyeditor. We'll resolve any edits she has either that night or bright and early the next morning. So...my typical day is about ~12hrs. Such is the life of startups. Over time I expect that number to trend downwards!

I try to carve out specific windows to check email but if we're being realistic I'm terminally in my inbox. Besides our recurring face-to-face Zooms, Payload employees will communicate over the course of the day asynchronously via Slack.

Our tech stack: - WordPress (for website and all of our articles) + Yoast (an SEO WP plug-in) + Google Analytics - Beehiiv (for newsletter) - Slack (comms) - G Suite (email, drafts, documents, sheets, etc) - Rippling (HR, payroll) - Ramp (corporate card) - Riverside, Anchor, and Descript (podcast recording, editing, and publishing, respectively)

What's not to love? I work with bright, motivated teammates and get to learn constantly by speaking with experts, business leaders, and space professionals who are much smarter than me.