About John

John Hubbell is a four-time Emmy Award-winning writer/producer of American documentary film and media. He created California Story Company as an agency and collaborative studio for work with leading visual journalists, interactive designers and interesting clients worldwide.  View his 2024 director’s reel here.

John plans, writes and leads production of projects. He also works independently as a writer and journalist for major publications, as well as an editor and consultant, helping in-house teams find and shape storylines. 

A fourth-generation native of Northern California who grew up in the nation’s most diverse ZIP code, John served previously as an editor and reporter on the national, foreign and political staffs of The Associated Press, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Asia edition of The New York Times. He has reported and produced work across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, created master narratives for highly honored museums and led teams on challenging storytelling missions around the world. 

Happily based in California after more than 20 years in New York, Washington, D.C., Hong Kong and Memphis (to name a few), John holds a bachelor of science in journalism from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo and a master’s degree in folklore/American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is especially proud to have worked on collaborative projects aimed to uplift diverse and underrepresented voices, from shaping the master narrative of the life of bluesman B.B. King for his namesake museum and a seminal PBS documentary on the lives of the Memphis sanitation workers whose strike fatefully drew the Rev. Luther King to the city.

He serves as a member of the advisory board of Cal Poly’s Journalism Department, and is a member of The Video Consortium, a worldwide community of leading nonfiction visual storytellers. He is also a mentor for Military Veterans in Journalism.