I have been deluged -- in all seriousness, deluged -- with e-mails from people today who are thrilled to hear the Daily News name is back, interested in writing for us, excited that a news organization is soliciting information from them, rather than merely disseminating it from on high. We've only been around for a short time, but apparently we've already touched [no, not that way, jackass] a lot of people. I'm lost for words in attempting to express how humbling and gratifying it is to hear from these folks.

Excerpts from a number of them follow. But first, a plug: If you like what we're doing here, please donate . We're a non-profit organization, and we rely on contributions to operate and grow. Now, the heart-warming letters:

-"The Chicago Daily News has risen from the grave! Terrific!"

-"First of all, congrats on the launch of the Daily News website. Nice to see someone bring back the name of a great Chicago newspaper."

-"Hi. I read what you guys are up to on the web. Sounds really cool. Has the potential to blow Chicago up." [EDITOR'S NOTE TO FBI AGENTS: I think she's using blow up in the euphemistic sense, rather than the raid-my-apartment-looking for-al-Qaeda sense. But if you're curious, come by and I'll give you some glogg.]

-I just heard about your launch of the Chicago Daily News website, and wanted to congratulate you on your website launch....I always heard about the greatness of the dearly departed newspaper, and when I heard about your website I became excited to see that it is back in the form of a grassroots journalism website. It sounds like a bold experiment that has rarely been tried in Chicago before.

-Great idea! I grew up here (I'm 24) and the trib's attempts at pandering to me via the red streak or whatever it's called is just insulting. Hopefully you can get some good, thoughtful articles that really exemplify the true grit of city reporting.

-You've probably heard this dozens of times in the past few days, but what the hell: Good luck. The city needs something like this. The Trib metro section is a bad joke most days, and the Sun-Times misses so much city news that doesn't involve shootings, stabbings or stolen asphalt. The Reader apparently has a fetish for poorly-sourced features and underemployed PBR drinkers in Wicker Park (didn't the Reader once run solid narrative news?). Crains is good only to a certain point. I hope you guys can tell me more about what's going on in my city.

I hope so too.