Dusty Christensen is an award-winning investigative reporter, editor and educator based in western Massachusetts.

As an independent journalist, Dusty has investigated everything from U.S. retirees gentrifying indigenous Ecuadorian villages to working conditions in the cannabis industry. He has reported for outlets including The Nation magazine, NPR, Haaretz, WNYC radio, The Appeal, In These Times and PBS.

As a local reporter in western Massachusetts, Dusty’s work has appeared in newspapers across the region, including the Daily Hampshire Gazette — where he was a staff writer for five years — The Boston Globe, The Springfield Republican, The Berkshire Eagle, the Greenfield Recorder and the Valley Advocate. He currently works as the investigative editor of the independent news outlet The Shoestring. He is also a frequent contributor to New England Public Media, the region’s NPR affiliate, and his radio reporting has also appeared on NPR member stations across the region.

While at the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the New England Newspaper & Press Association twice named him a finalist for best investigative reporting: for a probe into past abuses at the world-famous Clarke School for the Deaf and an exposé of corporate research agreements at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His months-long series on a financial crisis at Hampshire College was a NENPA finalist for best education reporting and was chronicled in a theatrically released documentary about the saga. In 2024, the Public Media Journalists Association awarded him second place in best digital writing for his New England Public Media investigation into 10 years of civilian complaints against the Holyoke Police Department. He was a 2020 New England First Amendment Coalition journalism fellow.

Dusty teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Smith College. He was one of the founding organizers of the labor union at the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where he helped lead a campaign to win the first-ever union contract at the newspaper. Dusty has also worked as a member organizer with the NewsGuild, helping other journalists across the country unionize their newsrooms.

Dusty previously worked as a producer at WNYC radio, a fact-checker at The Nation magazine and a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine from 2012 to 2014. He is a graduate of New York University’s global journalism master’s program, where he was a FLAS fellow. He speaks — with widely varying degrees of success — English, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian and Quechua.

Follow him on Instagram, Bluesky or X, or email him at dusty.christensen [at] protonmail [dot] com.