A random walk through Computer Science research
There’s a well-known saying “You only realise what you’ve lost when it’s gone”, and sometimes - instead of applying to love, family and friendship - it’s about a cool blog on the internet.
Adrian Colyer’s “morning paper” was a simple but effective concept: on every weekday, he’d write a friendly and accessible overview of a paper within the field of computer science. He maintained this release schedule for 6 years, from 2014 to its eventual conclusion in 2020.
While there are many blogs on the internet, this one felt different. Not because its writing was particularly special, but rather due to its ubiquity within the industry. It felt like everyone knew about it! If you were in any way interested in computer science and were invested enough to talk about it on the internet, someone would recommend the morning paper to you.
Its greatest two strengths were its consistent release schedule and how it was written for a wide technical audience, whether you were a student or a professor, working as a systems engineer at a big company or being a front-end webdev at a local business, there was a little something for everyone.
Yet, there was something special about the morning paper. In the right kinds of circles, people would come together to discuss “the” morning paper of the day. Or you could start your day at work by reading the morning paper and learn about something interesting within the industry.
I even remember that someone had written a script to automatically download and sync the morning paper to the reMarkable e-ink tablet for daily consumption! It was beyond clear that people really enjoyed this simple service.
The morning paper demonstrated the importance of a steady and consistent release schedule. It was different from an ordinary blog, and felt more like a traditional (albeit niche) newspaper.
At this point, it becomes important to note that despite the similarities between the morning paper and the more traditional idea of a newspaper, the morning paper was entirely free. No subscription necessary, no newsletters, no ads on the site. Just a paper.
Part of what made it feel special was its capacity to create this “newspaper-like” feeling while remaining entirely free of charge for anyone and everyone.
The ants and the pheromones
On February 8th, Adrian would publish what would become the morning’s paper last morning paper, “the ants and the pheromones”.
TLDR; this is the last edition of The Morning Paper for now. Plus: one strand of research you won’t want to miss!
And with that, it ended.
If you try to visit the blog right now, you’ll be met with an error message from your browser. You can still browse the morning paper’s archives through the wayback machine. There is still value to be found in browing through the archive, but reading through an old post doesn’t have the same magic to it that the steady and reliable everyday morning paper used to have.
The morning paper has left a small gap in industry publishing that has not been filled in by anything else. There are many great blogs in the tech sphere, but none with a similar cadence and ubiquity. LLMs can give you a summary of a blog post every day, but you’d be missing the communal aspect.
If anything, it shows the importance of simplicity and a steady release schedule. The writing of the morning paper was good, but it wasn’t special. The papers were interesting, but most of them weren’t groundbreaking. What I’m trying to get at here is that the regular scheduling and accessibility was what made it special in the long-term.
Maybe there’s room for someone to pick up the torch.
~ Laura