Poor Joan! Had years to correct the record, finally her son had to do it in court testimony
There is a test for institutional bias that does not require intent. It requires only a consistent pattern of what gets covered and what does not, applied over time to the same subjects. By that test, the Greenfield Recorder and the Daily Hampshire Gazette — both owned by Newspapers of New England, based in Concord, New Hampshire — have a documented pattern of selective coverage involving the Shelburne Police Department, the people who assaulted me on November 30, 2025, and the federal civil rights case that validates the most serious institutional complaint I have been making for six years.
What follows is not an accusation of malice. It is a record of what was covered, what was not, when I notified these publications directly, and what the pattern looks like when placed in a single document. The record includes the Editor-in-Chief's own words, published in her own column, in the same edition as the first front-page article about me — words that define a standard her paper has not applied to its coverage of my case.
What the Recorder Covered
In April 2025, the Recorder published coverage of a community petition calling for the removal of Detective Tucker Jenkins from the Shelburne Police Department, following findings by the Berkshire District Attorney's Office that he had made twenty-five phone calls totaling sixty-seven minutes to an eighteen-year-old female student at Mohawk Trail Regional School during a thirty-day period and had deleted related text messages. The DA's investigation found the conduct exceeded professional boundaries. The school district terminated his position.
The Recorder also covered the Select Board's subsequent vote to retain Jenkins despite the community petition, 218 signatures, the DA findings, and the school termination.
These are legitimate stories. I am not arguing they should not have been covered. I am noting what was covered so the contrast with what was not is legible.
What the Recorder Did Not Cover
On March 12, 2026, United States District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni, sitting in federal court in Springfield, denied qualified immunity to Detective Tucker Jenkins personally in Mlynick v. Town of Erving et al. (Case No. 3:24-cv-30108). The same Detective Tucker Jenkins. The same man whose school conduct the Recorder had covered extensively. The same man who remained employed by the Shelburne Police Department after the Select Board's vote to retain him.
The Recorder published nothing about this.
I emailed the Recorder directly on May 15, 2026 — to jdepin@recorder.com — with the PACER case link and the following message: "same cop that got fired from Mohawk Regional... you covered that... now the guy is costing the town massive legal fees. this ought to be front page."
No response. No coverage.
I also emailed the Daily Hampshire Gazette newsroom directly. No response. No coverage.
What the Mlynick Case Actually Says
A federal judge's denial of qualified immunity to a police officer personally is a significant legal finding. It means the court determined that the plaintiff's allegations, accepted as true at this stage, state a plausible civil rights violation — and that the officer cannot claim the shield of qualified immunity because the right he violated was clearly established at the time.
The facts, as summarized by Judge Mastroianni in his March 12, 2026 order:
John Mlynick entered into a written agreement with a woman named Ashley Audet in 2018 under which he agreed to take custody of her dog if she became unable to care for it. In August 2021, she contacted him and said she could not care for the dog. He took the dog pursuant to their written agreement. She then contacted the Shelburne Police Department claiming he had refused to return the dog. The dispatcher categorized the situation as a civil matter. Jenkins nonetheless investigated for five days. During that investigation, the court found, Jenkins left out key pieces of information, wrongly stated in his report that Mlynick had changed the dog's medication without medical guidance, and suggested Mlynick might be residing in a non-residential mill building inadequate for housing animals. Jenkins concluded there was probable cause to arrest Mlynick for animal cruelty, larceny, and receiving stolen property. He then transmitted this report to Sergeant Adam Paicos of the Erving Police Department, who arrested Mlynick on September 2, 2021. The charges were dismissed for lack of probable cause on July 11, 2022.
The court's findings on Jenkins are direct. Mlynick "has plausibly alleged that Jenkins and Paicos, both of whom reviewed the Homing Agreement and spoke with Plaintiff about his interpretation of the contract, did not have sufficient information to conclude that a crime had been committed." It was "reasonably foreseeable that Paicos would arrest Plaintiff based, in part, on the misleading information that Jenkins provided him with," and Jenkins "cannot escape section 1983 liability merely because he conducted the investigation but not the arrest." On qualified immunity: "reading the facts alleged in the complaint in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, and drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor, the court plausibly infers probable cause was clearly lacking."
That is a federal judge finding it plausible — before any discovery, at the threshold stage — that Tucker Jenkins provided misleading information, omitted exculpatory facts, and manufactured probable cause to arrest a man over what was, on its face, a civil contract dispute.
The defendants in that case include not only Jenkins and Paicos but also Chief Gregory Bardwell of the Shelburne Police Department and Chief Robert Holst of the Erving Police Department. Discovery is ongoing with a deadline of January 29, 2027. A status conference is scheduled for February 4, 2027. As of June 17, 2026, the plaintiff's counsel received an extension to June 29, 2026 to file amendments and supplements. This case is active and developing.
Why This Matters Beyond the Mlynick Case
The mechanism Judge Mastroianni found plausible — an officer omitting exculpatory facts, transmitting misleading information, manufacturing probable cause for a dispute that was obviously civil in nature — maps directly onto what Detective Jenkins and Officer Pettengill did to me in March 2023.
Jenkins and Pettengill compiled eight unverified police reports from a single complainant — Katherine Hennessey — into a criminal harassment charge (Report 23SHL-8-AR), opening their own report by noting they arrived "already aware of prior incidents." They had never met me. They had never interviewed me. The charge collapsed entirely at the show-cause hearing on June 6, 2023, when a clerk magistrate spent approximately one hour reviewing video and audio evidence and found No Probable Cause. Jenkins was present for the entire presentation. He took no corrective action. He made no perjury referral.
In the Mlynick case, Jenkins built a false arrest from a civil dispute by omitting a written contract that resolved the dispute in the defendant's favor. In my case, Jenkins built a criminal harassment charge from eight unverified reports, assembled without interviewing the accused, that collapsed on first evidentiary review. The mechanism is the same. The federal court has now said so, in a written order, under Judge Mastroianni's signature.
Chief Bardwell is a named defendant in the Mlynick case. He is also the same chief who, on October 16, 2025 — weeks before the assault — stood in front of me at the Neighbors gas station while I was in documented atrial fibrillation, refused to feel my pulse, stated on video that he "can't charge false police reports" (factually incorrect under M.G.L. c. 269 §13A), and walked away for coffee. He is the same chief who, on April 9, 2026 — after the assault, after the arraignment — classified a lyric expressing a wish to kill a specific named person with bare hands as "part of a musical performance." He then requested a 9.4% merit raise for his department, describing them as a "fantastic crew," thirteen days after Jenkins lost qualified immunity in federal court. The Select Board approved it. Member Rick LaPierre called it "well worth it."
The Recorder covered Jenkins at the school. It covered the petition and the Select Board vote to retain him. It did not cover the federal court finding that he personally manufactured probable cause. These are not separate stories. They are the same story at different stages of development, and the paper covered two stages while ignoring the third.
The Recorder's Other Coverage Choices in This Record
The Mlynick silence is not the only coverage choice worth examining.
On March 1, 2026 — the same day the criminal arraignment of Katherine Hennessey and Brook Batteau was publicly announced — the Recorder published a glowing front-page profile of the defendants presenting them as beloved community artists. The arraignment was not mentioned. Hennessey and Batteau were arraigned on April 7, 2026 on charges of Assault and Battery and Malicious Destruction of Property. Active criminal proceedings are pending.
The Recorder reported that the Change.org petition calling for removal of my public art was removed from the platform. It never reported why: the petition was removed for defamation and misinformation violations. That distinction matters to the twenty-two thousand people who saw the original coverage, many of whom signed or shared a petition the platform subsequently found violated its policies against defamation. The paper's audience was never told.
The original articles were republished with fresh indexing in August 2025, resetting their visibility in search results for my name — five years after they ran, while active criminal charges were pending against the people whose accusations formed the factual foundation of both pieces. No correction accompanied either the originals or the republication.
In May 2026, the Recorder published a positive review of a novel by former Editor-in-Chief Joan Livingston titled The Unforgiving Town, about a man who returns to a Massachusetts hilltown, is frozen out by the community, and ends up dead on a back road. The review ran nine days after Katherine Hennessey and Brook Batteau's arraignment on charges arising from their assault on me. The paper that helped establish the public narrative against me reviewed the former editor's novel about a community pariah on the heels of an arraignment involving her son's regular customers and musical guests. I am not claiming these facts mean anything specific. I am stating them and leaving them where they are.
The Notification Record
I did not simply notice this pattern and write about it. I notified both publications directly and repeatedly, documented in my sent email archive.
August 28, 2025 — I emailed Executive Editor Dan Crowley directly, with ten named Recorder staff members cc'd, about the Bridge of Flowers Committee's failure to contact me and the committee chair's public denial of her own documented published statements. No response. No coverage.
August 25, 2025 — I forwarded the formal public records request (SPR25/2545) to spalmer@recorder.com and dcrowley@recorder.com the same day it was filed with the police department. No response. No coverage. That request has produced zero documents to date — itself a story about public records obstruction that the Recorder has not written.
May 15, 2026 — I emailed jdepin@recorder.com with the Mlynick PACER link, explicitly connecting it to the paper's prior Jenkins coverage and stating it should be front page. No response. No coverage.
June 12, 2026 — I emailed amarietta@recorder.com linking my analysis of the DA's June 12 training on intimate partner violence and the gap between that institutional presentation and the reality of my documented case. No response. No coverage.
Additional emails cc'd Recorder staff on communications about Bridge of Flowers governance failures, the artist recognition policy, and the police department's documented conduct pattern. No responses. No coverage across any of it.
The Daily Hampshire Gazette received direct notifications as well. Radio silence throughout.
The Editor's Own Standard, Published the Same Month
There is one more document that belongs in this record, and it is the one that closes the loop.
In June 2020 — the same weeks the Recorder published two front-page articles about me without ever contacting me for comment — Editor-in-Chief Joan Livingston published a column in the paper's "My Turn" feature under the headline "Putting Things Into Perspective." She had been absent for emergency medical treatment. She was writing to address two reader complaints about coverage errors that had occurred during her absence. The column names the reporters who had carried the load: Max Marcus and Mary Byrne. Mary Byrne is the reporter who bylined both front-page articles about me. The same reporter. The same period. The same edition.
In the column, Livingston writes: "I want to emphasize the mistakes a newspaper makes in its coverage are public mistakes. And we own up to our mistakes. We also correct them. It is part of responsible journalism. Certainly, those steps were taken."
She closes: "We at the Recorder will do our best to report the news accurately, fairly and objectively. That is our standard, and is always our goal."
Those words were published under the Editor-in-Chief's byline, in the same edition as the first front-page article about me, in the same weeks her paper was establishing the public narrative that has damaged my professional reputation, my livelihood, and my health for six years.
The correction she invoked as a standard of responsible journalism has never come. The two articles about me have never been corrected. The Change.org removal for defamation and misinformation violations has never been reported to the same audience that read the original coverage. The articles were republished with fresh search indexing in 2025 without correction. The standard Joan Livingston defined in public, under her own name, in her own edition, has not been applied to coverage of my case.
Joan Livingston is now a Buckland Select Board member. Her son Zachary Livingston owns Floodwater Brewing, where the assault on me occurred on November 30, 2025. His sworn statement to Sergeant Gilmore on December 9, 2025 — documenting Brook Batteau's admission and his own response — is the prosecution's cleanest independent evidence. She received the November 29, 2025 mass email I sent to seventy-plus recipients warning of imminent legal action, sent the evening before the assault. No response. No action.
The former editor who published the founding narrative against me has a son whose sworn testimony is the key independent evidence in the criminal case arising from that narrative's consequences. She defined the standard. She ran the edition that broke it. The correction would still be free.
What This Pattern Represents
The press has a function in democratic society that is distinct from any other institution: it is the bridge between the operations of government and the public's ability to evaluate those operations. When a regional paper covers a police officer's misconduct at a school but not his personal loss of qualified immunity in federal court for manufacturing probable cause — and does so while ignoring direct notification with a PACER link — it is not providing its readers with a complete picture of the institutions responsible for their safety.
When it runs a glowing profile of criminal defendants on the day their arraignment is announced, reports a petition was removed without reporting why, republishes articles without correction five years later, and reviews a former editor's novel about a community pariah while active criminal proceedings involving her son's establishment are pending — the cumulative pattern is not a series of independent editorial judgments. It is a consistent orientation toward certain actors and away from others, applied over time, with documented notification that the missing stories exist and where to find them.
I have a name for what happens when institutions align with the quiet party and away from the documented one: Distributed Maintenance. It does not require coordination. It requires only the path of least resistance, chosen consistently, in the same direction, across six years of opportunities to ask a question and choose not to.
The archive is at johnsendelbach.com. No login. No fee. The PACER case number is 3:24-cv-30108. Judge Mastroianni's March 12, 2026 order is public record, available to any reporter willing to look.
I notified both papers. I gave them the case number. I made the argument.
The silence is documented.
John F. Sendelbach is a metalworker, sculptor, and public artist based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He has lived and worked in this community for eighteen years. His full archive is at johnsendelbach.com.
© 2026 John F. Sendelbach. All rights reserved.