Lawyer Goes Straight, Steps Up to Sportswriting
Lester Munson Jr. gave up the newspaper game 23 years ago for the noble calling of law. This year, at age 48, he gained the lofty perch of president of the Du Page County Bar Association, a title that might convey to you a life swelling in honors and dignity. What, then, are we to make of Munson’s sudden decision to chuck it all–in order to write sports for gosh sake? Can it be anything but pathetic regression, Munson in mid-life making a damn fool of himself?
The reason Munson bolted is the National Sports Daily, a newspaper that intends to be exactly that. Now being assembled in New York by publisher Peter Price, former publisher of the New York Post, and editor Frank Deford, former writing star at Sports Illustrated, the National will debut in mid-January as an archetypal phenomenon of our times–Americans exhibiting an uncontrollable national craving, and foreign operators moving in to gratify it. Behind Price and Deford is the reclusive Mexican media magnate Emilio Azcarraga.
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“Intensity,” says Peter Price. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? When people are passionate about something, you can be sure new media will emerge to satisfy the desire.”
Fresh from Princeton, Munson got a job at the Chicago Daily News in 1962 and was given a choice: city desk or sports. A budding grown-up, Munson chose hard news, and still wonders why he did. “I sometimes think that if I’d started in sports, I’d have stayed with it.”
“When you start in doing criminal work, you start with some 20-year-old who burglarized McDonald’s while it was open, some brilliant practitioner of the criminal art,” said Munson. “Then I guess you hope these guys will graduate to bigger and better things. Major felonies. Doing DUIs is not too exciting either.”
Munson confessed, “The life of a lawyer is not the life of a scholar in any way at all, at least the way I was doing it. The learned aspect of the profession was quite elusive to me. I felt frequently like a glorified claims adjuster.”
Where the Action Is
We’re a little shaken. We just heard from an old J-school pal, Surge, of the Post.
