- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- John Dickerson
John Dickerson
Journalist, Author & Former Co-Anchor of CBS Evening News
Biography
John Dickerson is a journalist, author, and longtime interviewer, most recently co-anchor of the CBS Evening News and chief political analyst for CBS News. He spent 16 years at CBS, where he also served as senior national correspondent, contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning, and previously co-host of CBS This Morning. From 2015 to 2018, he moderated Face the Nation and served as the network’s chief Washington correspondent. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he moderated two CBS presidential debates. From 2019 to 2021, he was a correspondent for 60 Minutes, where his story on the death of Elijah McClain was nominated for an Emmy. He resigned from CBS News in December 2025.
In addition to his political reporting, Dickerson is known for his in-depth interviews with figures ranging from Apple CEO Tim Cook to actors Glenda Jackson and Christian Bale; authors Colson Whitehead, Michael Lewis, and Tara Westover; and musicians John Prine, Jon Batiste, Jason Isbell, and Dave Matthews.
Dickerson is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and for 20 years has been a co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest. He also hosts Whistlestop, a podcast on presidential history, and Navel Gazing, drawn from 35 years of notebooks.
He began his career at Time magazine, covering economics, Congress, and national politics, and spent four years as its White House correspondent. From 2005 to 2015, he was Slate’s chief political correspondent. He has covered nine presidential campaigns.
Dickerson is the author of On Her Trail (Simon & Schuster); the New York Times bestseller Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History (Twelve Books); and The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency (Random House).
He has received the Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency, the David Broder Award for political reporting, and in 2025, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in TV Political Journalism for his essays.
A native Washingtonian, Dickerson graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia with a degree in English and American Studies. He lives in New York City.
Seminars
"Is This Thing On? How Politics, the Presidency & Media Actually Work"
There is the bombast around how elections, presidencies and the political media operate, and then there is the reality. Come for the latter with esteemed journalist John Dickerson, a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine, who recently left his role as co-anchor of the CBS Evening News amid a period of extraordinary upheaval in broadcast journalism. How do candidates and the media who cover them prepare for and engage in an election, and how has governing - and reporting on government - shifted over the decades? How has the media changed? As a print, podcast and television journalist, whose former network has been praised by the administration it reports on for its compliance, Dickerson will also touch on the changes in the profession. A former political columnist for Slate and Time, White House correspondent, one-time moderator of Face the Nation and 60 Minutes correspondent, John has interviewed legions of political leaders across the globe and is an expert on the American presidency, about which he has written two books.
Seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only.
We'll discuss the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. Where should we look for clues about American politics? What races are important? What races aren't? How do policy issues intersect with campaigns, how that has changed over time and how does that affect what gets done or doesn't get done in Washington?
President Adams threw a columnist in jail. Jefferson was almost undone by a "scandalmonger." Kennedy, Nixon and Johnson all tried to get reporters kicked off the air, and Obama tried to imprison some, too. While Donald Trump has kicked the press out of the Oval Office (including me) and darkly derided the media as “the enemy of the people," he did not invent the tension. Presidents have long had tough relations with the press. (Who, us?) Some history, some myth busting and a discussion of the current state of things. What is our job, anyway?
The presidency is nothing like the office that is described and promised during presidential campaigns. Seems like that's a flaw. How did it get that way? A history of presidential campaigns and a look at the presidency based on what actually happens in office.
What is the point of a political interview, anyway? How do you moderate a debate? Why don't reporters ask follow-up questions? Do big interviews help or hurt candidates? How do reporters actually prepare for and approach big journalism events?