Staff Directory

Dan Crowley is managing editor at the Gazette. He specializes in enterprise and investigative reporting.

Chad Cain is the opinion editor for the Gazette and the Amherst Bulletin.He has worked at the Gazette for nearly 12 years, in a number of different roles, including general assignment reporter, special sections editor and night managing editor.

James Pentland is the night managing editor for the Gazette, a copy editor and occasional editorial writer. Born and raised in Scotland, he is a former reporter and editor at the Brattleboro Reformer who started in the newspaper business 30 years ago. He has been shaping stories and producing pages for the Gazette for the last 15 years.

Dusty Christensen is the Holyoke beat writer and investigative reporter at the Gazette. Previously, Dusty worked as a producer at New York City’s NPR affiliate, WNYC radio, as a fact-checker at The Nation magazine and as a freelance writer. His work has appeared in The Nation, Haaretz, PBS, NPR, WNYC and other outlets. A graduate of New York University and the University of Georgia, Dusty also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Ukraine.

Bera Dunau is a graduate of Hampshire College who returned to the Pioneer Valley after a seven-year absence. He covers the city of Easthampton, as well as the towns of Southampton, Westhampton and wherever a good story takes him. The communities he has covered include Cooperstown, New York, Lenox, Foxboro, and most recently Northampton.

Scott Merzbach covers Amherst town government, police and fire, and other municipal issues. Merzbach, who grew up in Leverett and is a graduate of Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, has worked for the Gazette since 1996.

Kyle Grabowski is a sports writer at the Daily Hampshire Gazette. He grew up in Colorado and worked at the Durango Herald in the Four Corners before coming to New England. Kyle primarily covers high school sports for the Gazette but also has written about the Boston Marathon, PGA Tour and Frozen Four. He enjoys off-the-beaten path sports stories.

Ken Heidel is the editor of the Amherst Bulletin and a night editor at the Gazette. After a couple of years of reporting for a weekly in northwestern Connecticut, he made the leap to the daily news desk. He served as news editor and features editor for the Norwich Bulletin, a Gannett paper in Connecticut; and as copy desk chief and design desk chief for the Press Democrat, a New York Times Regional newspaper in Santa Rosa, California. After a yearlong stint as news editor at the Enterprise in Brockton, he worked for a dozen years as an opinion editor at the Hartford Courant, then for a year as the weekend editor for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut, before landing his current post in this awesome area.

Steve Pfarrer is a staff writer for the Gazette, covering art exhibitions, books, music, theater and other events. He previously was a staff writer for Hampshire Life magazine and also covered higher education and regional and local news stories.

Carol Lollis is the photography editor. She became a staff photographer at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in 1992 after receiving her master’s degree from Ohio University. She was named photo editor in 2008 and enjoys the opportunity to shoot as well as manage the photo department. Lollis lives in Westhampton with her husband and three sons.

Kevin Gutting joined the photo staff of the Daily Hampshire Gazette in 1995 after working for several daily newspapers in Ohio. The son of an Army officer, Gutting traveled the world as an “Army brat” before earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Florence and enjoys spending his time off with family and friends.