Dusty Christensen is an independent investigative reporter who has written about everything from police misconduct to changing diapers. He currently teaches news writing and reporting at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As an international correspondent, he has covered topics ranging from Ukraine’s nuclear industry to U.S. retirees gentrifying small indigenous villages in Ecuador, reporting for outlets including The Nation magazine, WNYC radio, NPR, Haaretz and PBS. As a local reporter in western Massachusetts, his work has appeared in newspapers including the Daily Hampshire Gazette — where he was a staff writer for five years — The Boston Globe, The Berkshire Eagle, the Greenfield Recorder and the Valley Advocate. His radio reporting has also appeared on NPR affiliate stations across the region.

While at the Gazette, Dusty’s probe into past abuses at the world-famous Clarke School for the Deaf was named a finalist for best investigative reporting by the New England Newspaper & Press Association. So too was his exposé digging into corporate research agreements at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His months-long series chronicling 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 2020, the New England First Amendment Coalition selected him as a journalism fellow.

Dusty was one of the founding organizers of the labor union at the Gazette, where he helped organize a campaign to win the first-ever union contract at the newspaper. Dusty also worked as a member organizer with the NewsGuild, helping other journalists across the country unionize their newsrooms. He was previously a producer at WNYC radio and a fact-checker at The Nation magazine, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine from 2012 to 2014.

Dusty 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 Twitter @dustyc123 or email him at dusty.christensen [at] protonmail [dot] com.