Most people remember Roger Mudd from his accomplished career as a journalist for entities like CBS, NBC, PBS and The History Channel, but what you may not know is that his career began right here at Darlington, and he returned in 2004 as the inaugural speaker in the school's Class of 1953 Lectureship Series.
Mudd started his career as a member of the Darlington faculty from 1951-52, teaching English and History and coaching JV football.
"My first real job—other than being a camp counselor or having a paper route—was as a teacher at Darlington," Mudd shared with the Darlington Community in 2004 during his lecture. "I arrived here in August 1951, fresh out of the graduate school at the University of North Carolina with a master’s degree in history. I could not wait to start teaching. I felt lucky to have been hired. True enough, I was a veteran of World War II, but a very young veteran. By the 1950s, the older veterans had finished getting their doctorate degrees and were way ahead of us in claiming their old jobs back. So I was lucky to be teaching anywhere ...
"The Darlington I came to in 53 years ago bears little resemblance to the Darlington I came to yesterday," he continued. "Back then, there were about 350 students, all boys, grades 6 through 12. More than half of them were day students from Rome and about 100 were from out of state, mostly North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida ... There were 16 teachers and that was it ... [Darlington] convinced me that helping young people understand the world around them, developing a core of values that would see them through was a life worth living ... It took another 40 years before I was able to return to the classroom—first at Princeton and then at Washington and Lee—but the magic was still there, waiting for me."
Mudd's first stop after Rome was Richmond, Va,. where he was hired as a cub reporter on the evening paper, The Richmond News Leader.
"Looking back now, I think I can see why I went from history to journalism—chasing the truth, using primary sources, accepting only eyewitness accounts, always pushing to be present at the creation," he said. "During those first days as a newspaperman, I sat on the re-write desk, wearing a headphone, taking dictation from The News Leader's stringers around the state—obituaries, short items on the oyster harvest, a promotion at the DuPont plant, a speech at the local Rotary Club. It was a painful experience, having to ask everyone to slow down, not knowing really how to type, knowing that my fingers were hitting the wrong keys or two keys at once, jamming the typewriter, feeling the editor standing at my shoulder, watching me botch one story after another. But on June 23 I finally got a byline story on the front page."
He went on to become a broadcaster at a radio station right across the street in Richmond before heading home for Washington in 1956.
"I had gotten a job with Channel Nine, then owned by The Washington Post and known as WTOP," he said. "Sometime in 1958, I started doing the 11 p.m. News on TV ... Life was relatively uncomplicated back then. I wrote all my own copy, picked out the still pictures I wanted to use, chose the film clips I thought appropriate, and refused to wear make-up until the years passed when I really needed it."
Five years later, Mudd was hired by CBS News and the rest is history.
"Being a CBS News correspondent meant that you were among the best; that you were a reporter of skill, that you knew your trade; that you tried each day to get as close to the truth as you could get or were allowed to get; that your head was on straight; and that you were, in fact, a cut above," he said. "Live press conferences didn’t begin until 1961 and what swept into power that year was not only the young and vigorous John Kennedy but also the young and vigorous television medium which changed American culture and politics. It was also about this time that that journalism began to change. With television everywhere and anywhere, ordinary events grew into crises; press conferences became command performances; presidential debates became a matter of political life or death."
And as the relationship between press and government was changing, so was the pace and pulse of communication, Mudd recalled.
"When I came back to Washington in 1956, the presidency was recorded by stenographers and typists; secretaries listened in and took notes during telephone calls. The press was using things we never see anymore—carbon paper, stencils, mimeographs, vacuum tubes, flashbulbs, film, cameras and typewriters," he said. "Within five or six years, there were transistors, TV.sets in almost every home, Xerox machines and tape recorders in all the offices and jet planes that brought London to within six hours of Washington. And within another 10 years, videotape, satellites and up links and down links and computers and laptops made the jet plane obsolete and no place in the world beyond reach. We had become indeed a 'video village.'"
After 19 years as a congressional and national affairs correspondent with CBS News, he moved to NBC News in 1980. There, he served as chief Washington correspondent; chief political correspondent; and co-anchor of the NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, American Almanac, and 1986. Mudd covered every national political convention from 1960 to 1990, as well as each national election. In addition, he was an essayist and correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from 1987 to 1992.
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 was also the editor of "Great Minds of History," interviews with five American historians published in 1999 by John Wiley & Sons.
Mudd died March 9, 2021, at the age of 93.
Click here to read the full transcript from Mudd's Class of 1953 Lectureship at Darlington in 2004.
