DATE: Sunday, July 20, 1997                 TAG: 9707200096

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   39 lines

STATE PRESS GROUP HONORS ROGER MUDD

Former CBS and NBC newsman Roger Mudd received the Parks-Mason Virginian of the Year Award on Saturday from the Virginia Press Association.

Mudd, 69, worked as a CBS News correspondent for 19 years, was co-anchor of the NBC Nightly News for two years and co-anchor of NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

Mudd began his journalism career in 1953 as a reporter for the now-defunct Richmond News-Leader and was news director at WRNL-AM in Richmond. He also worked as a reporter for WTOP-TV in Washington.

He joined CBS News in 1961 and moved to NBC in 1980. In 1982 and 1983, he and Tom Brokaw were co-anchors of the network's evening news program.

From 1987 until 1992, Mudd was an essayist and correspondent for the ``McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour'' on PBS. He left the program in 1992 and became a journalism professor at Princeton University.

Last year, Mudd joined Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor, other former network anchors, four U.S. Senators and journalist Paul Taylor in calling for networks to give free time to presidential candidates.

Mudd is a 1950 graduate of Washington & Lee University who earned his master's degree in history at the University of North Carolina in 1951.

He taught English and history for one year at a boys school in Rome, Ga., before entering journalism.

Since 1967, the VPA has presented the Parks-Mason Award annually to a Virginia native or resident whose life's work has brought credit to Virginia. Others winners include NBC weatherman Willard Scott, musician Bruce Hornsby, author William Styron and tennis great Arthur Ashe. ILLUSTRATION: GARY C. KNAPP

Former television newsman Roger Mudd, right, signs an autograph for

Bob Gardner, left foreground, at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia

Beach on Saturday. Mudd began his career at a Richmond newspaper in

1953.

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