John Hoerr

Who is John Hoerr?

John Hoerr is an American journalist and historian best known for his work on organized labor, industry, and politics.

He began a journalistic career in 1956 with United Press International in Newark, New Jersey and Trenton. Later he worked at The Daily Tribune in Royal Oak, Michigan, rejoined UPI for two years in Chicago, and served separate stints with Business Week, in Detroit and Pittsburgh, specializing as a labor reporter on the automobile, steel, and coal-mining industries. After five years as an on-air reporter and documentary producer at WQED, the PBS station in Pittsburgh, he returned to Business Week in 1975 as labor editor and later senior writer on the New York staff. Since 1991, he has been a free-lance writer of nonfiction and fiction.

He was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a steelmaking town in the Monongahela River Valley south of Pittsburgh. He graduated from McKeesport High School and Penn State University. During college he worked short stints in the steel works at McKeesport. Hoerr served in the U.S. Army 1953-1955 and was stationed in France. After many years in New Jersey, he lives now in Massachusetts.