The Future of No Bells

In light of recent news…

A few weeks back, it was announced that I’m going to be the new head of editorial content at Pitchfork. The hiring team was drawn specifically to my work building this very website from the ground up. As today’s my first day over at Pitchfork, I want to briefly explain what this means for the future of No Bells.

First thing’s first: Yes, No Bells Dot Blog will continue to exist. I won’t have the capacity to manage the day-to-day editing and publishing, so we’ve begun a search for somebody to take on those editorial responsibilities. In the interim, Millan Verma and a rotating cast will shoulder some of that load. Posts will be a bit more sporadic as we figure all this out. Long-term, I plan to settle into more of an advisory role to the new editorial team, offering my wisdom to whoever’s handling the day-to-day operations.

The print magazine is now slated for September. It’s all there! We had a small hitch in our printing plan that set us back. (Bear with us, we’re all figuring out how to make a magazine for the first time.)

Taking on this new role at Pitchfork has been bittersweet. It means having the chance to impact music journalism on a massive scale, but it also means shifting my attention away from this little thing that has grown from a strange URL to a whole world, a corner of the internet (and, occasionally, Myrtle-Broadway) for new voices to flex their muscles and be bold. I started No Bells in 2021 because I needed a place on the internet to be myself and share the music I liked. Stepping away from it feels like I’m giving up a part of myself.

I could speak on how this blog received attention from a bunch of gilded magazines, or how some of my all-time favorite writers co-signed it, or how it got me this job at Pitchfork. I could speak on how we’ve booked shows featuring some of the greatest artists of the 2020s off the strength of our integrity and curiosity, no gimmicks. Or how we’ve packed out sweaty, semi-legal spaces for the finest music writers of our time to share slam poetry about Slitherman, Slizzies and SZA. I’m constantly surprised by the opportunities No Bells has provided for me and my friends, and the possibilities it’s opened up for music journalism in general.

What’s really shocked me, though, has been all the zoomers that constantly read our articles, show up to our ramshackle events and take inspiration from this barebones WordPress situation to start their own little websites. Thinking about the future of music journalism is less depressing when you notice that every generation has its own crop of listeners who are curious, point their ears forwards and backwards in the history of music, and honor and disrupt the traditions of this thing we called blogging.

I’ll leave you with this: If a piece of music moves you, write about it. Crystallize that feeling, take it with you, and find your people through it. It’s good for you.