The DNA Files - Behind the Scenes

BEHIND THE SCENES

The DNA Files has brought together some of the most outstanding talent in public radio - producers, editors, researchers, scholars, and more. Here's where you can meet the people behind the vision...starting with John Hockenberry, our host.

A quick perusal of John Hockenberry's resume is puzzling. How did a University of Oregon student studying music composition and harpsichord end up reporting from Jerusalem during the Palestinian uprising?

Blame it on National Public Radio. It was while attending school in Oregon in 1980 that Hockenberry joined NPR as a reporter. By 1981 he'd accepted an assignment as reporter for All Things Considered in Washington, D.C., and four years later he took on an additional NPR assignment, in the Chicago Bureau.

By 1988 John was reporting from abroad. After his two years as a correspondent during the intense Palestinian conflict, he covered the Persian Gulf War, filing stories from locations throughout the Middle East. He was also one of the first Western broadcast journalists to report on the situation in the Kurdish refugee camps.

Closer to home, John has served as correspondent for the ABC newsmagazine Day One and as host for MSNBC's Edgewise. Since 1996 he has been a regular correspondent for Dateline NBC. His writing has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Columbia Journalism Review.

John's work has been honored with two Peabody awards: one in 1987 for a report on a man injured by a drive-by shooting, and the other in 1990 for his work on NPR's arts and public affairs program Heat. He invites anyone wanting more information on his life and times to pick up his memoir, Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence.

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