John Hockenberry, born in Dayton, Ohio, grew up in upstate New York and Michigan. He attended both the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon.

His broadcasting honors include: the 1984-5 Champion Tuck Business Reporting Awards, the 1985 Benton Fellowship Broadcast Journalism and the 1987 Unity in Media award. In 1986, he was named one of 40 "Journalist In Space" semifinals.

He joined NPR in 1987 where he won a Peabody Award for profiling a man permanently injured in a drive-by shooting. A public affairs program he helped create won a Peabody in 1990.

He was: NPR, general assignment reporter, correspondent for Day One (1993-5), Middle East correspondent during the Persian Gulf War, a broadcast journalist who reported from the Kurdish refugee camps in Northern Iraq and Turkey, spent two years (1988-90) as correspondent in Jerusalem during the Palestinian uprising. He received the Columbia Dupont Award for Foreign News coverage for reporting the Gulf War and an Emmy for television work.

From 1993-95, he was a correspondent on Day One.

He has authored Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence, a memoir of life as a foreign correspondent. In 1996, he performed Spokeman, a one-man, off-Broadway show based on the book. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post and others.

John joined NBC as a correspondent for Dateline in 1996. Some of his reports include a documentary on 3 former AT & T employees lives, discrimination confronting the disabled and coverage after the death of Princess Diana.