When Linda McSweeney was about 17 years old, she found herself in the public's eye.

McSweeney was a student at Maggie L. Walker High School during the 1970s when Richmond was struggling with the integration of public schools. One day a man came walking through the school cafeteria surrounded by television cameras.

He stuck a microphone in McSweeney's face and asked her what she thought about the issue.

"For about 30 minutes, it was on," she said yesterday, meaning she gave that man, CBS news reporter Roger Mudd, a piece of her mind.

Yesterday, Mudd spoke to a crowd at the Library of Virginia, one stop on his book tour for "The Place to Be." Waiting patiently on the side of the lecture hall was McSweeney, who had taken off work to see the man whose confidence and professionalism impressed her decades ago.

"You had a way . . . of putting me on edge and feeling comfortable at the same time," she told him from the audience. Mudd did not recognize McSweeney but did recall the encounter.

Mudd's book reflects his career in journalism, which started at The Richmond News Leader in 1953 and went on to radio and then television news in CBS' Washington bureau, where he spent 19 years.

He told stories yesterday about the news business back then. Nightly news programs were serious, the reporting strong. He said today, the networks' nightly news broadcasts are getting softer and losing their influence with the emergence of round-the-clock cable news channels and the Internet.

He took questions after speaking and was asked whether he felt the TV networks would ever stop airing nightly news broadcasts.

"Everything is floating, so you don't know what's going to happen," Mudd said.

The former reporter, anchor and author happened to be on McSweeney's mind recently, she said yesterday. One of her children is interested in a journalism career. Because of that, she was hoping to one day meet with Mudd again.

She got her wish.

"You came [to Richmond] because I was praying," she said.
Contact Holly Prestidge at (804) 649-6945 or hprestidge@timesdispatch.com.