In response to the numerous e-mails I've gotten but haven't had time to respond to, that headline pretty much sums it up.

From every indicator, BostonNOW was heading in all the right directions. Circulation was shooting upward and revenues were following. Since I took over the reigns at the Web site just over a month ago, some plans had made it live . . . just not my favorites.

Then the investors from Iceland quit paying the bill. I don' t know much about that.

But I do know that the people who worked at BostonNOW are among the best anywhere. They tried hard every day. The sales people embodied a mantra that CEO Russel Pergament touted regularly: "We don't sell advertising, we sell ideas."

From news to advertising, everyone had ideas. And they were firing them off as quickly as they could. I suppose I should be proud that our last paper included the launch of one of my ideas. Actually, it was me and a great promotions guy, Chris Nugent, who came up with it.

"Say anything." If you have something to say, and 300 people agree it's worth printing, then we will give you 300 words in print. All you have to do is get those 300 people to sign a copy of BostonNOW as if it were a petition.

The goal was to virally market BostonNOW by convincing regular folks to promote the paper via word of mouth -- that's the holy grail of marketing.

Just took a couple weeks and the idea went from our mouths to a graphic artist and into print. That's the kind of turnaround this industry needs. Obviously, I wish the paper never closed, so then at least we'd know what kind of response the campaign generated. I wish we could have seen the response to a lot of our ideas in the hopper. But what's worth remembering now is that BostonNOW had the type of people who were open to ideas and ran with them.

Now, if only the Icelandic krona were doing better.