John DeDakis

Author and Writing Coach John DeDakis is a former CNN Senior Copy Editor for the Emmy and Peabody-Award winning news program "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
DeDakis (pronounced deh-DAY-kiss) is the author of two mystery/suspense novels ("Fast Track" and "Bluff") published by ArcheBooks. His third and most recent novel, "Troubled Water," was published on February 21, 2014 by Strategic Media Books.
John DeDakis, a native of La Crosse, Wisconsin, began his journalism career in 1969 at a campus radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was tear gassed while covering an anti-Vietnam War riot in 1970. He earned a B.A. in Journalism from that university in 1977 following a stint in the U.S. Army where he worked from 1972-74 as a Special Events Reporter at The American Forces Network - Europe (AFN-E) based in Frankfurt, Germany. During that time he interviewed legendary film director Alfred Hitchcock.
From 1976 to 1983, DeDakis was a reporter at WMTV (NBC-15) in Madison, Wisconsin. From 1983 to 1988, he was a correspondent with CBN News in Virginia Beach, Virginia. DeDakis was CBN's White House Correspondent during the last three years of Ronald Reagan's presidency. In addition to interviewing Reagan, John also interviewed former president Jimmy Carter.
In March 2013, DeDakis retired from CNN after a 25-year career there that began in 1988 when he joined the network as a writer.
Since the fall of 2013, DeDakis has been an adjunct journalism faculty member at the University of Maryland-College Park.
DeDakis is currently working with Pittsburgh psychologist Joyce Wilde on a self-help memoir about their mutual losses (working title: "Healing from Grief: A Conversation"). He is working with agent Garry Dinnerman of Beverly Grant Associates (BGA) to bring the screenplay adaptations of his novels to the attention of Hollywood. John's literary agent since 2004 is Barbara Casey.