What drives someone to publish 600+ issues of a Postgres newsletter for over a decade? In Episode 28 of Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano, Peter Cooper—creator of Postgres Weekly—shares how his days of rustic programming and QBASIC fanzines on Usenet led to a newsletter empire that now reaches nearly half a million developers each week. We dig into the BBC's "big tent" editorial influence, an accidental business model that just worked, and the perils of "temporary" hacks. Plus: spam filters, a Photoshop addiction, and one very cheesy story (dairy-free).

Links mentioned in this episode:

Newsletter: Postgres Weekly
Cooperpress: List of newsletters
Newsletter: Latest issue of Postgres Weekly on Jun 19, 2025
Newsletter: Postgres Weekly issue with horrible graphic
Newsletter: Very first issue of Postgres Weekly on Mar 13, 2013
Newsletter: Ruby Weekly, the first Cooperpress newsletter
Book: Beginning Ruby Third Edition, by Peter Cooper
Podcast episode: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
Feed reader: Feedbin
GitHub repo: feedbin/feedbin
Feed reader: Feeder
Email testing software: Litmus
GitHub repo: MGML markup language for email
Paper: The Design of Postgres
GitHub repo: PGRX for building Postgres extensions in Rust
Podcast news: Podnews.net for daily briefings about podcasts
Wikipedia page: BBC Micro
Wikipedia page: ZX Spectrum
Cal invite: LIVE recording of Ep29 of Talking Postgres to happen on Wed Jul 9, 2025

12 years of Postgres Weekly with Peter Cooper