He’s Proof This Is More Than a One-Paper Town

I would like to interject a thread of balance to a parochial statement in Bill Shirley’s story on sports columnists. He said in the years following World War II that the only nationally known sports columnists were Jimmy Cannon, Red Smith and Jim Murray. In 1956, years before Jim Murray even came to The Times, my column was syndicated nationally. The fact our syndicate, using the Los Angeles dateline (most others were New York), was able to collect a respectable string of papers quite likely encouraged The Times’ syndicate years later to syndicate Jim, which it did successfully.

This argument doesn’t get me anywhere, except I don’t like the feeling to grow among your media authorities that unless a guy in this town writes for The Times, he can’t be known.

MEL DURSLAG

Columnist

Los Angeles Herald Examiner