Operating Notes
Editorial strategy and systems thinking for teams that ship. A weekly letter on editorial decisions, read by ~14,800 operators.
A public artifact of the practice.
Operating Notes is a weekly-ish letter I send from Brooklyn to founders, editors, and content leaders. It started in 2019 as a way to think out loud about editorial decisions in public; it now reaches about 14,800 subscribers at a 42% open rate. The archive below is searchable by issue — title, date, open rate, and a one-line topic note — so you can judge the work on substance before any sales call.
If something here matches a problem you're sitting with, the next step is a 30-minute strategy call. I send a one-page engagement memo before any contract.
Recent issues
Vol. VI — 2024
- Why your editorial calendar is a strategy document in disguise. On treating publishing cadence as a strategic choice, not an output target.
- The 30-day content audit: a one-page memo format. Replacing the 40-page audit deck with a memo a founder actually reads.
- Stealing from journalism: the inverted pyramid for product pages. What product copy can learn from newsroom structure, with worked examples.
- When to kill a content vertical: a decision rule. A short rubric for retiring a section that nobody on the team will defend.
An editorial calendar is not a publishing schedule. It is a public argument about what your company thinks matters.
— Operating Notes, No. 247, 14 March 2024
If any of this matches the problem you're sitting with
Book a strategy call.
30 minutes. No slides. You leave with one decision documented in writing, whether we work together or not. Booking Q1 — 2 slots remaining.