John McChesney joined NPR in 1979 where he developed NPR’s first national desk, a team of reporters based in cities across the country. He later created NPR’s first foreign desk, initiating major coverage of the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the Lebanese civil war, and the fall of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He then went on to become a correspondent reporting on Silicon Valley during the rise of the internet. After nearly ten years on that beat, he reported on agricultural technology and the organic revolution. He ended his NPR career covering the war in Iraq (three embeds) and the severe impact of the war on military families at home. In a major investigative piece aired on All Things Considered, he reported the CIA’s torture and killing of an Iraqi detainee at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

John won several awards for his work: the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association for his documentary on grand jury abuse; the World Hunger Media Award for reporting on famine in Chad; Dartmouth’s Champion-Tuck Award for reporting on health care costs in America; twice a participant winner of Overseas Press Club Awards for work done as editor of NPR’s foreign desk.

Before he joined NPR, John completed four years of graduate work at Stanford and was an assistant professor of American Literature at Antioch College for six years. After leaving NPR, he returned to Stanford at the Bill Lane Center for the American West. There he directed a program researching the rural West.