He began his journalism career as a news assistant at
The New York Times. In 1990, he moved to
Breckenridge, Colorado, where he worked at the
Rocky Mountain News. In 1994 he became a reporter for the
Orange County bureau of the
Los Angeles Times. In 1997, the
Los Angeles Times sent him to Atlanta, Georgia, to report on
the South as an on-the-scene reporter. His journalism work later took him to Denver, Colorado. While at the
Los Angeles Times he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 1998 for his article "Resurrecting the Champ," and received the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2000 He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Shannon Welch, former executive editor at
HarperOne and VP and editorial director at
Penguin Random House since 2021. They have two children. Moehringer's memoir,
The Tender Bar, was published in 2005. It recounts his childhood through his early twenties. It tells of his coming-of-age experiences at a local bar called Publicans (previously known as Dickens, later Edison's), which served as a sanctuary from his chaotic family life. A movie version of the memoir,
The Tender Bar, directed by
George Clooney and starring
Ben Affleck,
Tye Sheridan and
Daniel Ranieri, was released on
Amazon Prime on January 7, 2022. After retired tennis star
Andre Agassi read
The Tender Bar, he asked Moehringer to collaborate with him on his memoir. The resulting book,
Open: An Autobiography, was published in 2009. Moehringer wrote an article for the
Los Angeles Times Magazine about a homeless man who claimed he was
Bob Satterfield. In 2007, it was adapted as the basis of the film
Resurrecting the Champ, directed by
Rod Lurie and starring
Samuel L. Jackson,
Josh Hartnett, and
Alan Alda. Moehringer's novel
Sutton, based on the life of bank robber
Willie Sutton, was published in 2012. Moehringer ghostwrote
Phil Knight's memoir,
Shoe Dog, published in 2016, and
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex's 2023 memoir,
Spare. Moehringer says that he was stalked and harassed by the press and paparazzi after his name was leaked to the press ahead of the release of
Spare. Moehringer wrote, alongside
Ari Emanuel,
Roll the Calls, a 2026 memoir based on Emanuel's rise up the corporate ladder (with Knopf Doubleday as the publisher). ==Awards==