John Hechinger is a senior special writer covering education in the Boston bureau of The Wall Street Journal. He reports to Gary Putka, Boston bureau chief and senior editor. 
 
Mr. Hechinger began his career at The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, working in various reporting positions from 1989 until 1997, when he joined the Journal as a staff reporter for the New England edition. There, he wrote the “Heard in New England” stock-market-column. In January 1999, he joined the Boston bureau as a financial-services beat reporter, a position he held until September 2004, when he assumed his current role.

In 1995, Mr. Hechinger won a first-place award in investigative reporting from the North Carolina Press Association for his coverage of abuse and neglect of the elderly in North Carolina rest homes. In 1993, he won the same award for articles that he co-authored exposing how oil companies polluted a Charlotte neighborhood. 

Born in New York, Mr. Hechinger received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude (with distinction in English), from Yale University. He currently resides in Brookline, Mass., with his wife, Ricki Morell, and their daughter, Rachel.