Mudd provides inside look at CBS, TV news' glory days

During the 1960s and 1970s, Roger Mudd was one of several high-profile television correspondents for CBS News — in the days when CBS was always No. 1.

A history major who almost became a history professor, Mudd was articulate, well-prepared and spoke in a perfectly modulated bass voice.

Over the years he covered Capitol Hill, anchored the CBS Saturday Evening News and regularly substituted for Walter Cronkite in the days when Cronkite was known as "the most trusted man in America." Just as Cronkite was dedicated to hard news, Mudd was the epitome of the tough interviewer who put his subjects on the spot and got excellent results.

Some of his most memorable appearances came at the Democratic and Republican conventions held every four years and the presidential election coverage, where his knowledge and wry wit often reigned supreme.

Mudd has just written a marvelous book, "The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News," partly a personal memoir and partly a tribute to the unique, competitive corps of correspondents who sparred with each other in the CBS Washington Bureau.

It is filled with his own memories and anecdotes, but he combines it with the memories of most of the other correspondents who served with him. Through Mudd's observant descriptions, the reader learns a great deal about what it's like to be in the spotlight every day of the week, the friendships and rivalries that bring journalists together.

"It was hard to work any real history in the one-minute-forty-five second segments I had on the 'Evening News,' but I hope it affected the tone of my pieces and maybe gave it a smattering of political sophistication," said Mudd in a phone interview from his home in McLean, Va.

His master's thesis was written on American contemporary political history, with an emphasis on Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and his relations with the press. Mudd said he decided to write a memoir after his retirement from the History Channel in 2004.

"In 2005, I began to write seriously without a story line. I was trying to put down my memories before I forgot them. After I had a draft written, my friend Jim Lehrer suggested I send it to Public Affairs Publishers and they wrote back saying "it lacked an art." They wanted me to spend more time emphasizing the greatness of the CBS Washington Bureau."

So, Mudd purchased a microcassette recorder and began telephoning his former colleagues.

"They were delighted to be called," Mudd said, "and each person had a different view."