Daniel Payne is a health care reporter at POLITICO. Before becoming a health care reporter, he was a fellow at POLITICO.

Before POLITICO, Daniel worked to push The DeSoto Times-Tribune toward a digital-first approach as the Mississippi newspaper’s executive editor. He emphasized aggressive accountability reporting on the pandemic and redesigned the newspaper, newsletters and social media accounts. A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Oxford, Daniel was editor-in-chief of The Daily Mississippian, where he also helped overhaul the newspaper’s website and workflow. Daniel has interned for the Globe Post in Washington, D.C., and worked as a reporter and panelist for the Lens Collective researching, filming and editing short films on civil rights activists.