Posted by Jeremy Shulkin
Jeff Barnard, one of the city’s most prolific and popular bloggers, passed away yesterday after being diagnosed with melanoma earlier this year.
In his introductory blog post on wormtowntaxi.com back in May of 2007, he wrote about how his most recent job as a taxi driver would influence his writing. It became clear that he had a different take on everything from national news stories to local politics and Worcester’s failed attempts to smoothly pour concrete patches over potholes. His penchant for taking cell phone photos from his cab were a hit with regular readers, but his habit of revealing which city officials weren’t shoveling their sidewalks made him well-known to everyone else. He was opinionated and passionate, and he never gave a pass to local media for any half-assed story.
It’s possible that most people who read this site only know Jeff through his blog, but it was only one facet of his life. I met Jeff a few times since starting at Worcester Mag; any word you could use to describe his blog would also be an apt description of him as a person. Many local writers, plugged in newshounds and tech-savvy folk will miss his writing, but there are plenty more Worcesterites who don’t know what a blog is, or who rarely type on a keyboard or click a mouse, that will miss him even more.
Daily Worcesteria 