Robert Knight McCormick, journalist and NBC radio and television news correspondent, was born August 9, 1911, in Danville, Kentucky. He attended George Washington University until the Depression forced him to leave after one year. McCormick then went to work for the Washington Daily News. Beginning as copy boy in 1930 he advanced to city reporter, then sports editor, and finally to columnist. In 1936 he joined Collier's, where he wrote an aviation column and authored popularized versions of political, biographical, and science stories.
In 1942 McCormick was hired by the National Broadcasting Company. The following year NBC appointed him chief of its Central Pacific Bureau, with headquarters first at Pearl Harbor and later at Guam. McCormick was named head of the network's Washington, D.C., televison news bureau in 1949, and as such he was one of the pioneers of television news broadcasting. He went to Paris for NBC in 1951 as European manager of NBC-TV News. Later, as bureau chief, he was transferred to Frankfort, Germany, and then to Bonn. Returned to Washington, D.C., in 1955, he became NBC's State Department correspondent. In the early 1960s the network assigned him to coverage of congressional affairs. He retired from NBC News in 1976.
McCormick was co-editor of Innovative Organization for Population Research (1971), in which he authored the short essay, “Population and the Media.” He died in 1985.
