Javier C. Hernández

Javier C. Hernandez is an American journalist for The New York Times. Since 2025, he has been the paper's Tokyo bureau chief.^[1] He was part of a reporting team that received the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.^[2][3]

Hernandez was born to Honduran parents and raised in Eugene, Oregon.^[1][4] He obtained his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 2008, where he was the managing editor of The Harvard Crimson.^[5] While at The Crimson, Hernandez worked with Anton Troianovski, who was an associate managing editor with Hernandez. The two later became bureau chiefs at The New York Times.^[6]

After graduating from Harvard, Hernandez joined the Times, where he covered politics and education.^[7] In 2015, Hernandez moved to China, where he began covering the country for the Times. While in China, Hernandez covered the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.^[8] Hernandez began covering the emergence of COVID-19 in China in 2020, before relocating to Taiwan after he was expelled by the Chinese government.^[9][10] Hernandez later won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the pandemic.^[2] In 2021, Hernandez became the Times' classical music and dance reporter. He broke the news of the discovery of Chopin's Waltz in A minor in 2024.^[11] He won an award from the Los Angeles Press Club for his investigation of Anna Netrebko's ties to Vladimir Putin in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[12]

In 2025, The New York Times announced that Hernandez would be the paper's next Tokyo bureau chief.^[1]