John Hockenberry
John Charles Hockenberry (born June 4, 1956) is an American journalist and author. He has reported from all over the world, on a wide variety of stories in several mediums for more than three decades. He has written dozens of magazine and newspaper articles, a play, and two books, including the bestselling memoir Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the novel A River Out Of Eden.[1] He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, The Columbia Journalism Review, Metropolis, The Washington Post, and Harper's Magazine.
John Hockenberry
Studied math at University of Chicago
Studied music at University of Oregon
Radio and television journalist, author
1980–present
Chris Todd (19??–1984)
Alison Craiglow (1995–2017)
5
Hockenberry has appeared as a presenter or moderator at many design and idea conferences around the world including the TED conference, the World Science Festival in New York and in Brisbane, the Mayo Clinic's Transform Symposium, and the Aspen Comedy Festival. He has been a Distinguished Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and serves on the White House Fellows Committee.
He is a prominent figure in the disability rights movement; Hockenberry sustained a spinal cord injury in a car crash at age 19, which left him with paraplegia from the chest down.
In late 2017, several colleagues accused Hockenberry of harassment, unwanted touching and bullying.[2][3][4]
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Hockenberry was born in Dayton, Ohio,[5] and grew up in Vestal, New York and Michigan. He graduated in 1974 from East Grand Rapids High School in East Grand Rapids, Michigan.[6] In 1976, he was paralyzed while hitchhiking on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.[7] The driver of the car fell asleep and crashed, killing herself. Hockenberry's spinal cord was damaged, and he remains paralyzed without sensation or voluntary movement from the mid-chest down. At the time he was a mathematics major at the University of Chicago,[8] but after his spinal cord injury, he transferred to the University of Oregon in 1980 and studied harpsichord and piano.[9]
Journalism career[edit]
Hockenberry started his career as a volunteer for the National Public Radio affiliate KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.[10] In 1981, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a newscaster.[11] From 1989 to 1990 he hosted a two-hour nightly news show called HEAT with John Hockenberry. During his 15 years with NPR, he covered many areas of the world, including an assignment as a Middle East correspondent, reporting on the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and 1992. Beginning in November 1991 he served as the first host of NPR's Talk of the Nation.[12]
After leaving NPR in 1992,[13] Hockenberry also worked for ABC News series Day One from 1993 to 1995, covering the civil war in Somalia and the early days of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, before joining Dateline NBC as a correspondent in 1996.