As the news filtered through the blogosphere last week that Philadelphia Inquirer book review editor Frank Wilson was retiring, freelance reviewers responded with equal parts praise and frustration. Yesterday, Wilson finally spoke to his motivations through his Books, Inq. blog, observing that he's been planning this career shift since last year. "I could have continued to get along by going along," he reflects, "but I didn't have to, and I sure didn't want to. So I decided not to." The final straws came when Inquirer management informed him they were no longer interested in the ongoing columns he'd set up on YA literature, audiobooks, and digital publishing technology. So, once he'd informed the writers of those columns, he figured he was done:

"It would have been both intellectually dishonest and more inauthentic than I can bring myself to be to implement policy changes that I not only do not agree with, but that also run counter [to] just about everything I had been doing."

The newspaper world's loss will probably turn out to be the blogosphere's gain. As Bill Peschel notes, Wilson's already a hit online: "[He's] built an presence on the Web the same way anyone can: frequent, good posts, and by interacting with bloggers."

(photo by Andro Linklater)