Roger Mudd, author of The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News (2008), was the documentary host and correspondent for The History Channel from 1995 until he retired in 2004. Between 1961 to 1992, he was a Washington correspondent for CBS News, NBC News and the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour on PBS. He won the George Foster Peabody award for "The Selling of the Pentagon" in 1970 and for "Teddy" in 1979 and the Barone Award for Distinguished Washington Reporting in 1990.

Between 1992 and 1996, he was a visiting professor of politics and the press at Princeton University and at Washington & Lee University.

Mudd graduated from Washington & Lee University in 1950 and from the University of North Carolina in 1953 with a degree in history.

He enlisted in the US Army in 1945 and served with the 2nd Armored Division.

Mudd is on the board of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges and the National Portrait Gallery, the advisory boards of the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Jepson School of Leadership at the University of Richmond.

Mudd, born in Washington, D.C. in 1928, is married to the former E. J. Spears of Richmond, Virginia. They have four children, eleven grandchildren and have lived in McLean, Virginia for 35 years.

(Source: http://www.rogermudd.com/bio.html. Used with permission.)

Excerpt from The Place to Be

During those nineteen years, six months and six days at CBS News, working in its Washington Bureau was the central experience of my life. There was no news bureau like it anywhere in television or, with two or three exceptions, in print. Of the hundred or so reporters and producers who worked in the bureau during those two decades, almost all of us were college graduates. Three or four went to the Ivy schools, a few more to private colleges but most attended the big public universities — Illinois, Indiana, Michigan State, Missouri, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, City College of New York and Rutgers. We were the sons and daughters of bakers, electrical engineers, ditch diggers, map makers, roofers, preachers, maids, architects, house painters, professors, coal miners, mill workers, deli owners, nurses, salesmen, bankers and manufacturers. Only two were from wealthy parents.

Being assigned to the Washington Bureau was never automatic; it meant either you were of top network quality or showed signs of it. We all felt privileged and lucky to be in the Bureau but each of us knew, given the competition within and without, we wouldn't stay long if we didn't measure up. This was no hiding place or dumping ground for losers.

Once in the Bureau, though, believing we were the best; we tended to swagger; we were aggressive, we out- covered, out-wrote and out-filmed our competition. We laughed at the gentlemanly, pipe-smoking NBC Bureau which sniffed at our hard-charging ways. They claimed their follow-up stories were superior to our breaking stories, not much of a claim if you're in the news business. We were quietly proud of each other's work, although compliments were rare, egos and vanity being obstacles.

The only time the rule was broken was when new reporters made their debut on the Cronkite show. We would gather around the big monitor in the newsroom to watch and to give the rookie a welcoming round of applause. The camaraderie was rough and tumble but genuine. Bob Schieffer felt he wasn't part of the Bureau until the night we all hooted at him for pronouncing it "tenderhooks" instead of "tenterhooks".

For me and the hundreds of others in the Washington Bureau those 20 years were the Glory Years of Television News.

(Source: http://www.rogermudd.com/excerpt.html. Used with permission.)

For more information, please visit rogermudd.com.