In 2007, he began working full-time on his new book, a memoir, The Longest Trip Home. His journalistic career of over 20 years has won him several state and national awards, including the National Press Club's Consumer Journalism Award. The Inquirer published a volume of his best articles in 2007 called Bad Dogs Have More Fun. Three years later, in 2002, he joined The Philadelphia Inquirer as a columnist. In 1999, he was named managing editor of Rodale's Organic Gardening magazine and moved to Pennsylvania. After the fellowship, he was hired as a bureau reporter at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, eventually being promoted to metropolitan columnist. He was later accepted as a fellow at the Poynter Institute of Media Studies in St. In 1985, he received a fellowship into the Kiplinger Mid-Career Program in Public Affairs Reporting at Ohio State University, where he earned a master's degree in Journalism, graduating in 1986. Upon graduation from Central Michigan University in 1979, he was hired as a police reporter for the St. His first college internship was at a community weekly paper called The Spinal Column. He attended Central Michigan University, where he double majored in Journalism and English, and wrote for the school newspaper, CM-Life. He wrote for his school newspaper in high school and started an underground tabloid. He transferred from the Brother Rice Catholic High to a public high school, West Bloomfield High School (class of 1975), as a sophomore. By eighth grade (1970–71) at the Our Lady of Refuge, he was writing humorous stories about the nuns. Grogan notes that his mother's passion and gift for storytelling 'wore off' on him. The neighborhood served as the setting for much of his memoir, The Longest Trip Home.

Not long after he was born, the family moved to Harbor Hills, in Orchard Lake Village, Michigan. His father, Richard, was an engineer for General Motors and a Navy veteran, while his mother, Ruth Marie, was a stay-at-home mom. Grogan was born to a Catholic family of Irish descent in Detroit, Michigan on March 20, 1957, the youngest of four siblings.

His memoir Marley & Me (2005), was a very best selling book, about his family's dog, Marley, in real life. John Joseph Grogan ( / ˈ ɡ r oʊ ɡ ən/ GROH-gən born March 20, 1957) is an American journalist and non-fiction writer.

Marley and me book author