March 18, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: Roger Mudd Looks Back on the Glory Years of CBS News in 'The Place to Be'
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Valentine's Day 1980 was anything but a love-fest when Roger Mudd was told by his bosses at CBS News that "'We're going with Rather," choosing Dan Rather over the presumptive heir apparent to Walter Cronkite, who had announced his retirement after more than a decade and a half as CBS's anchor. Mudd recounts his highs and lows of 20 years in the CBS News Washington Bureau in "The Place to Be" (PublicAffairs, 432 pages, $27.95).
Anyone else would stumble out of the bureau and find the nearest warm and cozy bar, but serious reader Mudd headed for Larry McMurtry's bookstore in Georgetown, where he plunked down $40 for a copy of Robert Penn Warren's "World Enough and Time."
Like many of us who've spent serious time in journalism, Roger Mudd believes the best is in the past, with today's downsized news operations a pale shadow of the glory years of civil rights coverage, Watergate and all that. The "Tiffany Network" -- CBS -- had almost three dozen reporters in the 1970s, compared with less than a dozen today, Mudd writes. Similarly, with 42 years of journalism under my belt, I certainly think the metropolitan papers I've worked on were much better years ago. They've been dumbed down the way the TV networks have dumbed down their coverage.
Mudd took a big risk when he bit the hand that fed him -- criticizing TV news coverage -- at his alma mater, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA on Dec. 7, 1970. He provides us with quotes from his speech at the Lee Chapel in Chapter 35, "The Hand That Feeds You." Among other brutally self-critical comments about the failings of TV news, he said "the inherent limitations of our media make it a powerful means of communication but also a crude one which tends to strike at the emotions, rather than the intellect." (Page 254). That, to me, is a comment that is still appropriate, even more so in the proliferation of news lite and celebrity coverage programs.
When reports of the speech reached CBS in New York, Mudd was subjected to questioning by Richard Salant, head of CBS News and Bill Small, head of the Washington Bureau where he spent most of his time when not subbing for Uncle Walter Cronkite in New York. Mudd admits to a serious arrogance problem, not a good sign when ass-kissing and boot-licking is the order of the day to advance to the highest levels in a news organization.
Mudd, nearing 80, provides us with incisive profiles of about 60 news men and women he worked with at CBS, including Rather, his rival; the Kalb brothers, Marvin and Bernard: Bill Plante, who's still covering the White House, and senior Washington bureau staff Bob Schieffer. Lesley Stahl is here, along with Rita Braver, Marya McLaughlin, Nancy Dickerson, Connie Chung, George Herman, Phil Jones and many, many more.
"The Place to Be" includes responses from as many staffers as Mudd could contact. He's meticulous in getting the other side of an anecdote or story. This is much more than a memoir, although it qualifies as one: It's a frank and unwavering look at the news business, with plenty of detail about the technicians and behind the camera people who are an integral part of the collaborative nature of TV news. He even interviews a veteran makeup artist on cosmetic preferences of politicians and TV personalities. The back of the book, along with a bibliography and index, includes a very helpful "Where Are They Now" listing of CBS reporters.
After leaving CBS in 1980, Mudd worked for NBC as co-anchor of "NBC Nightly News" until 1986. He followed up with a job at 'The McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour' on PBS, which he describes as five "happy and rewarding years." This was followed by ten years at The History Channel and visiting professorships at Washington and Lee and Princeton.
Mudd's heart may have been broken that Valentine's Day in 1980, but this reviewer gets the feeling that his heart will always belong to CBS -- especially the Washington bureau on M Street. The book's subtitle says it all: "Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News."
Publisher's web site: www.publicaffairsbooks.com
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BOOK REVIEW: Roger Mudd Looks Back on the Glory Years of CBS News in 'The Place to Be'
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Valentine's Day 1980 was anything but a love-fest when Roger Mudd was told by his bosses at CBS News that "'We're going with Rather," choosing Dan Rather over the presumptive heir apparent to Walter Cronkite, who had announced his retirement after more than a decade and a half as CBS's anchor. Mudd recounts his highs and lows of 20 years in the CBS News Washington Bureau in "The Place to Be" (PublicAffairs, 432 pages, $27.95).
Anyone else would stumble out of the bureau and find the nearest warm and cozy bar, but serious reader Mudd headed for Larry McMurtry's bookstore in Georgetown, where he plunked down $40 for a copy of Robert Penn Warren's "World Enough and Time."
Like many of us who've spent serious time in journalism, Roger Mudd believes the best is in the past, with today's downsized news operations a pale shadow of the glory years of civil rights coverage, Watergate and all that. The "Tiffany Network" -- CBS -- had almost three dozen reporters in the 1970s, compared with less than a dozen today, Mudd writes. Similarly, with 42 years of journalism under my belt, I certainly think the metropolitan papers I've worked on were much better years ago. They've been dumbed down the way the TV networks have dumbed down their coverage.
Mudd took a big risk when he bit the hand that fed him -- criticizing TV news coverage -- at his alma mater, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA on Dec. 7, 1970. He provides us with quotes from his speech at the Lee Chapel in Chapter 35, "The Hand That Feeds You." Among other brutally self-critical comments about the failings of TV news, he said "the inherent limitations of our media make it a powerful means of communication but also a crude one which tends to strike at the emotions, rather than the intellect." (Page 254). That, to me, is a comment that is still appropriate, even more so in the proliferation of news lite and celebrity coverage programs.
When reports of the speech reached CBS in New York, Mudd was subjected to questioning by Richard Salant, head of CBS News and Bill Small, head of the Washington Bureau where he spent most of his time when not subbing for Uncle Walter Cronkite in New York. Mudd admits to a serious arrogance problem, not a good sign when ass-kissing and boot-licking is the order of the day to advance to the highest levels in a news organization.
Mudd, nearing 80, provides us with incisive profiles of about 60 news men and women he worked with at CBS, including Rather, his rival; the Kalb brothers, Marvin and Bernard: Bill Plante, who's still covering the White House, and senior Washington bureau staff Bob Schieffer. Lesley Stahl is here, along with Rita Braver, Marya McLaughlin, Nancy Dickerson, Connie Chung, George Herman, Phil Jones and many, many more.
"The Place to Be" includes responses from as many staffers as Mudd could contact. He's meticulous in getting the other side of an anecdote or story. This is much more than a memoir, although it qualifies as one: It's a frank and unwavering look at the news business, with plenty of detail about the technicians and behind the camera people who are an integral part of the collaborative nature of TV news. He even interviews a veteran makeup artist on cosmetic preferences of politicians and TV personalities. The back of the book, along with a bibliography and index, includes a very helpful "Where Are They Now" listing of CBS reporters.
After leaving CBS in 1980, Mudd worked for NBC as co-anchor of "NBC Nightly News" until 1986. He followed up with a job at 'The McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour' on PBS, which he describes as five "happy and rewarding years." This was followed by ten years at The History Channel and visiting professorships at Washington and Lee and Princeton.
Mudd's heart may have been broken that Valentine's Day in 1980, but this reviewer gets the feeling that his heart will always belong to CBS -- especially the Washington bureau on M Street. The book's subtitle says it all: "Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News."
Publisher's web site: www.publicaffairsbooks.com
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