Our condolences go out to our colleagues at the North Adams Transcript on the passing of Editor-in-Chief Glenn Drohan.

Glenn died Thursday morning after several years battling cancer. He spent more than a quarter-century in local newsrooms, leaving a legacy of hard-hitting journalism on the printed page and hammered into young reporters' brains.

The Transcript's Senior Reporter Jennifer Huberdeau wrote an

about Glenn from the perspective of his many friends and sometime adversaries. I knew Glenn for more than a decade but not that he'd acted in a children's theater troupe or sang and played the guitar. Beneath that crusty reporter exterior he was really an artist.

He wasn't always the easiest person to work with, but he was dedicated to his craft. An award-winning writer, Glenn had an encyclopedic knowledge of every significant political and news event in North County for the past three decades. His extensive body of work are a researcher's heaven — from the history of the Greylock Glen projects to the closing of Yankee Atomic to the behind-the-scenes maneuvering for charter schools.

There were articles that I, as a reporter and copy editor at New England Newspapers, would find myself referring back to again and again. They were concise, well written and loaded with facts.

I always envisioned Glenn as one of those old leather-shoe reporters, hanging out in a police station, hoisting one at the end of workingman's bar, pecking away at a typewriter with a cigarette dangling from his lips, meeting an informant in a dark parking garage. He was a man with ink in his blood; he didn't fit easily into the newfangled world of Internet news.

His longtime friend Mayor John Barrett III really summed up Glenn best in Huberdeau's story: "Glenn was a newsman's newsman."

iBerkshires wants to send congratulations to two brand-new Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduates: Melanie Rancourt and Jonathon DelSordo.

Melanie (the one on the right) is a teacher in the North Adams Public School system and an occasional freelance writer for us. Her favorite subjects to write about: "Twilight," school activities and programs, and Northern Berkshire Relay for Life. We haven't seen much of her in the past year because she's been hard at work earning her master's degree in education. Congratulations, Melanie from everyone at iBerkshires.

Jonathan was our intern in 2009, though it seems just last year. The Richmond resident trucked his way up to North Adams in between summer break and summer work at The Scoop in Lenox and wrote some great articles on baseball, restaurants and roads. On Saturday, Jonathan received his bachelor of arts degree in English.

He wrote for the MCLA Beacon, and Class President Keifer Gammell in his address to the graduates used a quote from him. Jonathan, he said, had summed up MCLA experience: "All of us are different, unique and in no way are we the same as any one other person. That's what makes it so special: Being ourselves in a crowd of others who are different."

He said some very nice things about us when I spoke to him afterward. He's not sure exactly what he's going to do after this summer other than to travel, but I know he'll go far (and I'm happy to provide a reference if he needs one). Congratulations Jonathan from everyone at iBerkshires. Keep in touch.