Biography
John Hockenberry was born in Dayton, Ohio, and raised in upstate New York and Michigan. He attended the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon.
The Takeaway represents Hockenberry's return to public radio, where he was an early innovator, after spending 15 years in network and cable television. During his tenure at ABC and NBC, he received four Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Casey Medal. He has also been recognized for his groundbreaking online content, hosts the acclaimed public radio series The DNA Files, contributes weekly commentary to The Infinite Mind, and currently holds the position of Distinguished Fellow at the MIT Media Lab.
At NBC, Hockenberry was a correspondent for Dateline, producing stories that ranged from a personal profile of a young adult with schizophrenia to an investigative report tracking internet fraudsters globally, as well as conducting the first and only interview with the brother of two 9/11 suicide hijackers. He also hosted his own MSNBC programs, Hockenberry and Edgewise.
He was among the first Western broadcast journalists to report from Kurdish refugee camps in Northern Iraq and Southern Turkey. During the first Gulf War, he reported from multiple countries including Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Additionally, he spent two years as a correspondent based in Jerusalem during the peak of the Palestinian uprising.
Hockenberry contributes as an editor to Conde Nast Portfolio and Metropolis magazines and has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, I.D., The Columbia Journalism Review, Details, Wired, and The Washington Post.
He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alison, and their two sets of twins: Zoe, Olivia, Zachary, and Regan.
