In September 1998 John did a follow-up to his Emmy Award-winning Dateline piece, "Caught in the Net". He has done two very well-received Dateline segments on the Americans with Disabilities Act, "No Way In" which aired in September 1997 and a sequel, "Legends of the ADA" which aired in August 1998. He co-hosted a two-hour live town meeting, "What Do You Tell the Children?", during the White House scandal. His field reporting during his MSNBC program "Hockenberry" included three weeks of live shows from refugee camps in Albania that received much critical praise. Live shows from Iowa, Texas, and New Hampshire took the public's pulse concerning year 2000 presidential candidates. John interviewed basketball greats at center court in the Alamo Dome in San Antonio, TX (the '99 NBA Finals had the night off!).

John has a two-book deal with Doubleday. His first novel, "A River Out of Eden", was recently published. (Latest info. about the book will be posted at Hockenberry Yahoo Club.) It’s an environmental thriller set in the Pacific Northwest (where he first worked for NPR in Oregon and Washington State). John has said that "The Columbia River up there is the last great story of the American frontier. In less than a century, life along the river went from fur trapping to the atom bomb." (The processing plant where nuclear material for the Nagasaki bomb was refined is located on the Columbia.) (Editorial comment: The two creators of this website are thrilled with John's choice of location for this book, both reside in the Pacific Northwest!)