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.

He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, The Columbia Journalism Review, Metropolis, The Washington Post, and Harper's Magazine.

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.

He graduated in 1974 from East Grand Rapids High School in East Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In 1976, he was paralyzed while hitchhiking on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

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, but after his spinal cord injury, he transferred to the University of Oregon in 1980 and studied harpsichord and piano.

Hockenberry started his career as a volunteer for the National Public Radio affiliate KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.

In 1981, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a newscaster.

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.

After leaving NPR in 1992, 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.

In 1995, Hockenberry published his memoir Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence.

In 1996 he appeared off-Broadway in his one-man autobiographical play, Spoke Man.

From 1996 to 1997 he hosted Edgewise, an eclectic news magazine program that aired on MSNBC.

His weekly radio commentaries aired on the nationally broadcast public radio program The Infinite Mind from 1998 to 2008.

He also served as host on The DNA Files for the series airing in 1998, 2001, and 2007.

In 1999, he hosted Hockenberry, a show which aired on MSNBC for six months.

He reported on the Kosovo War in 1999.

He published his first novel, A River Out of Eden, in 2002, and he has written about "The Blogs of War" in Wired magazine.

He was one of the founding inductees to the Spinal Cord Injury Hall of Fame in 2005.

In 2005 he wrote a scathing review of the Academy Award-winning film Million Dollar Baby called "And the Loser Is..."

The review was submitted to a disability website with the title "Million Dollar Bigot" as an exclusive feature.

In May 2006, he began writing his own blog, "The Blogenberry".

He began developing The Takeaway in 2007 and hosted the show from its 2008 premiere until August 2017.

Hockenberry has narrated several nonfiction projects on healthcare, including Nova series Survivor M.D.: Hearts & Minds, Who Cares: Chronic Illness in America, Remaking American Medicine.

He also narrated the eugenics documentary, War Against the Weak.

He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, I.D., Wired, The Columbia Journalism Review, Details, and The Washington Post.

On April 2, 2008, he hosted the premiere of the series Nanotechnology: The Power of Small, discussing the impact of nanotechnology as concerns the general public.

Hockenberry has appeared as presenter and moderator at numerous design and idea conferences around the nation including the Aspen Design Summit, The TED conference, the World Science Festival, and the Aspen Comedy Festival.

He also regularly speaks on media, journalism, and disability issues.

In late 2017, several colleagues accused Hockenberry of harassment, unwanted touching and bullying.

Hockenberry was born in Dayton, Ohio, and grew up in Vestal, New York and Michigan.

In a New York Magazine exposé, published December 1, 2017, journalist Suki Kim accused Hockenberry of sexually harassing her and other women he had worked with on The Takeaway.