Staff Directory

Brooke Hauser is the editor in chief of the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Originally from Miami, Florida, she has written for the Miami Herald, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as well as magazines such as Marie Claire, Allure and Glamour. She is also the author of two books, “Enter Helen,” a biography of iconic Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, and “The New Kids,” a narrative nonfiction book chronicling the lives of newly arrived immigrant and refugee students at a Brooklyn high school. Based in the Northampton area, she and her husband have two kids.

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.

Greta Jochem is the Northampton beat reporter. In addition to covering the city and its schools, she is interested in writing about LGBTQ issues and the environment. Her work has appeared in outlets including NPR, Grist, Wired, and Mother Jones. At Tufts University, Greta was an editor of the student-run magazine. She is originally from Wisconsin.

Michael Connors is the courts and police beat reporter at the Gazette. Originally from New York, he grew up in southern New Hampshire and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019. A proud alum of the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, he first started at the Gazette as a news intern his junior year of college.

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.

Jacquelyn Voghel covers higher education and South Hadley. Prior to her time at the Gazette, she wrote for Connecticut’s New Britain Herald and was the editor in chief of the student newspaper at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.

Chris Goudreau is a staff writer covering arts, health, weekend living, home and other feature stories for the Gazette, including Hampshire Life, and the Valley Advocate. He’s a graduate of Westfield State University’s communication department (class of 2013) and previously wrote for Reminder Publications covering Agawam, Hampden, Wilbraham, Longmeadow and East Longmeadow before joining the Newspapers of New England family with the Valley Advocate in 2017. He has a bimonthly local album review column in the Advocate and enjoys writing about local arts and people.

Mike Moran has been the sports editor since July 2010. He is a 2002 graduate of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston. A native of Chicopee, Moran played three sports — cross country, basketball and track and field — at Chicopee High School.

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.

Josh Walfish has been the UMass athletics beat writer at the Gazette since July 2018. The Maryland native previously worked in North Carolina and Virginia before moving to western Massachusetts. He is a proud graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and there is a 90 percent chance he’ll be wearing something purple if you see him.

Gage Nutter is a sports writer at the Daily Hampshire Gazette. He grew up in Charlton, Massachusetts and graduated from Springfield College in 2019. Before joining the Gazette, he was a freelancer for MassLive, The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. He likes visiting Cape Cod and dislikes high school football games that start at eight o’clock.

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.

Dave Eisenstadter edits Hampshire Life magazine and oversees the Gazette’s Features Department. He has been a journalist for more than a decade, having worked for The Boston Globe, the Keene Sentinel, and other publications in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He has written two books and won more than a dozen journalism awards. He joined the Gazette in 2014 and has held numerous roles, including reporter, web editor, page designer, and editor in chief of the Valley Advocate, a title he still holds.

Luis Fieldman is a staff writer for the Gazette and Valley Advocate, covering features.

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.

Jerrey Roberts joined the photo staff at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in 1993 after working for daily newspapers in Wisconsin, Missouri and Texas, though he has also worked as a portrait photographer and a studio photographer. Originally from Wisconsin, he was schooled at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He lives in Westfield and enjoys antiquing, weekend getaways and traveling with his wife, Lu.

Brenda Nelson is the calendar editor at the Gazette and the former receptionist and librarian at the paper. She has been with the Gazette for seven years and was formerly an editorial assistant at the Republican in Springfield for 12 years. She loves the challenge of working in ever-changing newsrooms and especially appreciates the collaborative environment. Brenda is a longtime Holyoke resident and a lifetime western Massachusetts resident.

Bill Foster has been in the printing industry for over 35 years and performed many different roles throughout this time. As operations manager, he supports the pressroom, pre-press, and distribution.