Career
He followed Barack Obama"s presidential bid from its start in February 2007 and traveled with the candidate to nearly 40 states while working for the Chicago Tribune. Obama and McCormick developed a friendly rapport during the campaign. In August 2008, McCormick asked Obama if he was still "shopping" for a vice president
Obama"s rebuke was, "John, how long did it take you to think of that question?"
On November
7, 2008, during the Q&A portion of a news conference carried live on all major United States. television networks, the then-president-elect allowed a handful of reporters to ask questions. Then, looking at the list of potential questioners on his podium, Obama smiled and called out, "Where is John McCormick?".
McCormick"s question was about the Senate seat Obama was vacating and whether he had any advice for the Illinois governor who, by statute, would be naming Obama"s successor in the United States. Senate. A testier exchange took place on December
16, 2008, when the reporter asked Obama about a list of favored potential replacements for his senate seat that had reportedly been given by his aides to then Illinois Government.
Rod Blagojevich. The Washington Post made mention of the exchange in a column by Dana Milbank. McCormick was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
He is a 1987 graduate of Roseville Area High School and 1991 graduate of the University of Saint Thomas (Minnesota).
Since his teenage years, McCormick has been a Federal Communication Commission licensed Amateur Radio operator. His station includes a tower with a five-element yagi on the top, connected to an International Council of Museums IC-756PRO transceiver. He is a skilled contester and DXer and active on most ham frequencies.
During his senior year of college, McCormick interned at the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune newspaper.
About a month after graduation, he started a job at the Rochester Post-Bulletin in southeastern Minnesota, where he covered police, courts, local government, before being assigned to cover the Minnesota Legislature and state government in Saint Paul. In 1997, he moved to The Des Moines Register, where he initially worked as a business reporter and then became the paper"s first computer-assisted reporting coordinator.
He also helped cover the 2000 Iowa caucuses and was one of two Iowa Poll writers. McCormick was hired by the Chicago Tribune in 2002.
There, he has done investigative and project reporting, and has covered major news stories in Chicago and across the Midwest, including the 2002 fatal plane crash of Senator.
Paul Wellstone in northern Minnesota. In 2003 and 2004, he was on a team of reporters who covered the presidential campaign. After being promoted to the Tribune"s Washington Bureau, McCormick resigned from the newspaper in July 2009 to join Bloomberg"s Chicago Bureau.