The Place to Be

February 4, 2008
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.