From the Publisher
Roger Mudd joined CBS in 1961, and as the congressional correspondent, became a star covering the historic Senate debate over the 1964 Civil Right Act. Appearing at the steps of Congress every morning, noon, and night for the twelve weeks of filibuster, he established a reputation as a leading political reporter. Mudd was one of half a dozen major figures in the stable of CBS News broadcasters at a time when the network's standing as a provider of news was at its peak.
In The Place to Be, Mudd tells of how the bureau worked: the rivalries, the egos, the pride, the competition, the ambitions, and the gathering frustrations of conveying the world to a national television audient in thirty minutes minus commercials. It is the story of a unique TV news bureau, unmatched in its quality, dedication, and professionalism. It shows what TV journalism was once like and what it's missing today.
Wall Street Journal
The Place to Be is a cautionary tale about Mr. Mudd's own honorable career and by implication about the way network TV news has devolved into today's mix of frantic cable blather.
The Washington Post -
James Rosen
Mudd's The Place to Be brilliantly captures an era when war, protests, riots, assassinations and scandals rocked America and a newly ascendant medium transmitted images of the upheaval in real time…Mudd's anecdotes are rich…But Mudd deserves credit for not writing simply from memory. Instead, he tracked down and interviewed 46 of his old colleagues, including Rather, to give them their say on key events. The result is a classic of Washington journalism, a wry and probing memoir of a career that mattered when the news mattered.
Publishers Weekly
Mudd's memoir, based on his own notes and extensive interviews, looks back at his 20 years in the CBS News Washington bureau. Mudd, about to turn 80, left CBS in anger when he was passed over to succeed Walter Cronkite, going on to report for NBC and narrate at the History Channel before retiring. But by his own admission, he "never truly ceased being a CBS man." Although he does not mask his bitterness about the Cronkite succession or hesitate to detail the shortcomings of his fellow journalists (especially Dan Rather), Mudd has written a mostly affectionate memoir. The anecdotes about his former colleagues are often humorous, occasionally nasty, but rarely gratuitous, and he is equally unsparing of himself. Mudd's aim is to educate his readers about how first-rate television journalism used to occur more frequently than it does today, and he is a fine teacher. In addition, he fills the book with stories about the politicians and bureaucrats he covered, most memorably the Kennedy brothers and U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois. Mudd's writing is smooth, his tone approachable, and readers old enough to have watched CBS News during the Mudd years are likely to feel nostalgia. (Apr.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Kirkus Reviews
Veteran TV newsman Mudd engrossingly dissects the coming of age of television news, as experienced at the best and brightest shop on the block. His memoir of the "golden age" of CBS News's Washington bureau-perhaps not coincidentally coinciding with Mudd's 1960s-'70s tenure there-takes a lively and gratifyingly candid look back at a pre-CNN, pre-Internet, pre-cell phone media struggling to decode the strange signs and customs of the U.S. government for a mass audience. Revered as the House that Murrow Built, CBS News attracted an astonishing number of driven, talented journalists with a nearly religious zeal for beating the competition and creating the best possible broadcast. Mudd covered the congressional beat, earning a reputation as a hard-nosed, somewhat irreverent, prickly perfectionist. He was deemed Walter Cronkite's heir apparent at the anchor desk, and more than 25 years after losing that seat to sometime friend and professional nemesis Dan Rather, his bitterness is still palpable. Mudd paints an illuminating portrait of Rather as talented, ruthlessly ambitious, calculating and fatally eager for the big scoop at the expense of journalistic probity and his own credibility. Equally sharp are sketches revealing Cronkite's high standards and tin ear for popular culture; Eric Sevareid's brilliance and difficult personality; Connie Chung's remarkable pluck; Ed Bradley's diva-like tendencies, etc. This makes for delicious gossip, but Mudd's aim is to show the type of person-tightly wound, obsessive and possessed of a healthy ego-that made possible CBS News's many journalistic coups. His insightful reminiscences of covering the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the civil-rightsmovement bring a fresh insider's perspective to these familiar events. Also engaging are Mudd's takes on lesser-known stories, rich in period detail and crackling with the urgency of deadlines and the need to prove one's self anew every day. Brisk, brusque and surprisingly witty-a must for students of the peculiar marriage of politics and entertainment.
What People Are Saying
Jim Lehrer
Finally, somebody has chronicled what it takes to practice quality journalism on network television. Roger Mudd has done so in a way that is one great large story made up of many great small stories that results in a book that, in the reading, is like eating peanuts. You can't put it down. Open the package--the book--and there is pleasure, meaning, laughter, annoyance, grins, frowns to behold on most every page. Mudd has superbly recounted the saga of CBS News Washington at a time of history and journalism that was important to him, his profession and his country. This is a book that matters.
Bob Schieffer
Mudd, Rather, Severeid , Kalb and Schorr. They were all household names and I felt a Little Leaguer coming to bat in Yankee Stadium when I joined the bureau in 1969. Roger Mudd was the best of all of us, and he tells the whole story of those days as only he could--the titanic battles with the government and our rivalries with each other mixed in with some of the funniest political yarns I have ever heard. I laughed out loud and even shed a tear or two. The Place to Be is the perfect example of what a professional memoir ought to be.
Diane Rehm
When Roger Mudd delivered the CBS Evening News, Americans paid attention. From early his days as a budding broadcaster, through his coverage of the Senate filibuster debate over Civil Rights, to his devastating Peabody-Award-winning interview with Ted Kennedy, Mudd demonstrates why CBS was The Place To Be. He candidly recounts the gritty details behind the scenes, and the power struggles among the people shaping network news. In the end, we understand the glories and disappointments of a career in the heyday of television news. Every person concerned with the direction of today's news would do well to take in the lessons of this book.
— National Public Radio
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