The Improper Bostonian abruptly closed up shop Thursday after 28 years, cutting loose some 20 full time employees and another dozen or so freelancers, according to the paper's editor, Matt Martinelli.

Longtime Improper Bostonian writer Jonathan Soroff spoke to WGBH All Things Considered anchor Barbara Howard about the history of the magazine and its demise. This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Barbara Howard: To some in our newsroom, you were the Improper Bostonian. In your Twitter account, you describe yourself as a narcissist, a name-dropper, and a one-man Mardi Gras. You have covered some of the edgier sides of Boston, always on point with trends. So, were you at the magazine from the beginning?

Jonathan Soroff: Yes. I was the one of the very early hires. An editor who I had worked with at the Boston Herald knew that my publisher at the time, Mark Semonian, was looking for someone to do a social column and suggested that I would be good for it.

Howard: The Improper Bostonian came out for free every other week. The website says it had 426,000 readers. And like a lot of beleaguered newspapers and magazines, it was long supported by ad revenue and classified ads. The paper's Matt Martinelli told us about that: "Say you’re 23 years old and you want to go into sales. You could go sell anything in the world. Why would you choose to sell print ads for a living?" So was this that same broken business model that other newspapers and magazines are undergoing?

Soroff: Yeah, the landscape is just constantly shifting and you know, with the advances in technology, with new media, with everything, it's just constantly shifting ground, and so it's really hard to find solid footing.

Howard: It had some great writing and some wonderful photography.

Soroff: Thank you. For a very small, family-owned company, we punched way above our weight. And from beginning to end, we never let our standards slip. We always put out a really great publication and we had a really great run.

Howard: Well plenty of people have come and gone over the course of the Improper Bostonian's run. Do you have any memories you'd like to share?

Soroff: Oh, lots. I mean, one of the things that I did was interview a celebrity in every issue for the past 20 something years, and so people always ask who is my favorite interview or something like that. And I usually go for the people who are no longer with us, like Julia Child or Maya Angelou. I really wish my mother had been alive to see me interview Gloria Steinem.

Howard: You were invited to be on some boards, like the Boston Ballet. I saw a photo of you as Mother Ginger nicely made up.

Soroff: Yes, that was one of the more harebrained things I've ever done. I danced Mother Ginger in three performances of "The Nutcracker."

Howard: Have you had a lot of response to the closing?

Soroff: Oh yes, yes. People are very sad. It was very much part of their lives, whether you were somebody who only read it when you went to the doctor's office or to get your hair done, or whether you ran to the nearest box and planned your weekend around it. People had a very strong connection to the magazine, to the voices in the magazine.

Howard: What was it like to work in that newsroom?

Soroff: It was wild. When we were younger, we did a lot more sort of newsy things. I remember the one time that we were quoted in The Wall Street Journal and in The New York Times. We had published the private emails between Bill Koch and his estranged mistress. He was trying to get her out of his condo in the Four Seasons. They were fairly pornographic in content, and we published them, and it made national news. We did some crazy stories — one time when we were on Newbury Street, we wrote a story about our landlord and his feud with his brother, and we were promptly evicted from our offices. We did a lot of really harebrained, very daring, very funny things.

Howard: Take me to the newsroom yesterday when you got the word. What was it like?

Soroff: There was a definite pall. My publisher, Wendy Semonian Eppich, sat down and she was very, very, very sympathetic. She was emotional, everyone was emotional. It's sort of like a death in the family. It's not sort of like a death in the family, it feels like a death in the family.

Howard: What's going to happen with everyone?

Soroff: Everybody who worked there was so tremendously talented. I really don't think that there's going to be tremendous difficulty for them to find, maybe not in print media, but some outlet where their talents are used.

Howard: What about you?

Soroff: I'll be sending you my resume.

Howard: All right. I’ll be here. Very nice talking with you.

Soroff: Likewise. Thanks so much for having me.

Howard: That's Jonathan Soroff, longtime writer for the Improper Bostonian. The magazine is no more. It ceased publication this week after 28 years.