In my News Literacy class, I stress to my students the need to seek out alternative sources of information — to seek out voices that may directly counter their own view of the world.

For overly liberal western Massachusetts, that “other” voice often came via Larry Kelley and his Only in the Republic of Amherst blog. But now his voice is gone after he was tragically killed in a car accident Feb. 17.

Larry’s voice was distinctive. He tried to engage both sides of an issue but often found himself right-of-center — important for an area dominated by liberal voices.

He covered a lot of ground in his blog and often took pride in being the first to break local stories. He actively covered town government in Amherst, posting video from a wide range of meetings including Town Meeting and the school board. His reporting almost single-handedly ended the annual exhibit of public drunkenness known as the “Blarney Blowout.” And he reported on the shameful conduct of Amherst and Pelham officials in the treatment of a single mother and her child.

He had his passions.

He was obsessed with open government and one of his final blog posts concerned an Open Meeting Law complaint he filed against the Amherst School Committee. The post is a bit eerie in that Larry talks about his own demise:

“If the three cheating School Committee members went out for a beer after last night’s contentious meeting and raised a glass to my ultimate demise, that would not be an OML violation. But if they discussed how they are going to handle my follow-up complaint to the AG, that clearly would be.

“Public officials are held to a higher standard. As they should be!”

Larry was a self-described “activist-journalist” and he often toed the line of impartiality when it came to drunk-driving arrests, the “Blarney Blowout,” and the issue closest to his heart: the American flag. It was his reporting and dedication to those issues that brought conservatives to his blog and his Facebook page. When folks questioned whether conservatives existed in western Massachusetts, I often pointed them to Larry’s blog.

Larry and I would chat periodically about news in town and at UMass. We often disagreed.

Sometimes, we had exchanges.

The last time we “chatted” was a public Twitter exchange during his coverage of the flag controversy at Hampshire College last November. At issue for me was what I believed to be Larry’s exaggerated numbers of those attending the protest. After a vibrant back-and-forth on Twitter, he agreed to downgrade his crowd estimates.

Larry was definitely a new-age journalist. He engaged with his audience and he could often be found reporting and commenting on social media. He took stands — many of which were controversial in liberal Amherst. Larry didn’t seem to care.

And while he had many friends in the area, his style of reporting also created enemies. His decision to publish the photos of those arraigned on Monday mornings after UMass party weekends and his negative portrayals of college students resulted in few friendships with those in the 20-something demographic. And, his comments surrounding the overdose death of UMass student Eric Sinacori a few years ago rubbed a number of people the wrong way.

Larry seemed to embrace his controversial approach to citizen journalism. He saw his mission as a simple one: To shine a light on areas that would otherwise go uncovered. And when you do that, feathers get ruffled.

He was unapologetic in his quest for truth and pushed other reporters in the area to do better. He often spoke about how he “beat” the competition — often by publishing to Facebook or Twitter.

So it only seemed natural that news of Larry’s death began to circulate on Facebook late Friday night and early Saturday morning as friends and associates began commenting on his death. By midday Saturday, his Facebook page was swamped with condolence messages.

Stephanie Murray, a student in the UMass Journalism Department who also works part-time for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, covered Larry’s death for the Gazette last weekend. After her story was published to the Gazette’s website Saturday, she posted on Twitter that “the irony is not lost on me that Larry would’ve had this story on his blog last night and we published it mid-morning the next day.”

It’s an irony that you know Larry would have appreciated.

Steve Fox is a senior lecturer and sports journalism director for the Journalism Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.