Noiseless

I started this blog nearly five years ago, not long after discovering that Alex Ross of The New Yorker had a blog. I think I broke into a cold sweat the first time I read The Rest is Noise; if Alex Ross was blogging, I knew that blogs were going to be an important part of classical music journalism going forward. It's true that Alex said he'd started the blog to help him procrastinate, but the blog quickly took on a life of its own.

Now he's moving his current blogging activities to the web site of TNY, and I find myself surprising shocked and sad about this. Honestly, it feels a bit like the death of a friend.

Businesses that move their location have been known to lose customers; web site redesigns typically lose readers. (I quit reading Salon after their last redesign, for example.) I'm not sure it's a good idea to blog from your employer's web site rather than from your own stand-alone, highly-regarded blog; sure, Alex might work at TNY forever, but given the state of print journalism....would TNY be able to survive as a web-only publication? What if the web site disappears?

And I find TNY's web site crowded, messy, and not very pleasant to read. (Well, at least you can enlarge the font size easily by clicking a larger A on most pages.) I'd suggest using RSS and your favorite feed reader.

I'm leaving The Rest is Noise on my blogroll; Alex says it may be updated with book news and samples from time to time. His new blog, Unquiet Thoughts, joins the blogroll today.