legman
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: journalism
media
Etymology: From leg + -man, modelled after legwork, in reference to the walking such a person does.
Base: leg
Affixes: -man
Inflected forms:
form: legmen
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: leg man
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A person hired to carry out errands or (often) menial tasks, frequently requiring travel from place to place; an errand boy or errand girl, a runner.
pos: noun
examples: During the nine-month Great Lakes shipping season, the ore hogs—shovelers, "larry" car weighers, bulldozer operators, car pushers and "leg" men—unite in this miracle of supply that stock-piles enough iron ore to last through the winter. The leg man on a Hulett iron-ore unloader must possess a special blend of brawn, brains and a "go for broke" attitude. He must also be conscious of the safety of fellow workers below him as he deftly maneuvers a 75-ton vertical ramrod and iron-jawed grab bucket.
[W]ell, anyway, he sent a chap who acts as his confidential ‘leg-man’ and ‘Man Friday’.
Guillam was boss and legman, and twice a day he dropped the tapes on the Berne residency, using a parked car as a letter-box.
A large ship was discharging LASH (lighter aboard ship) barges at its aft end. [...] The crane broke down and a repairman was called. One legman descended from his post on a small raised platform to the deck next to the crane. Once repaired, the crane operator sounded a warning siren. Thinking all was clear, he started the crane toward the aft. The legman next to the crane ran aft and attempted to climb a small ladder next to his post. He was caught between the ladder and the crane, suffering multiple injuries.
Once in Hollywood he [Andrew J. Fenady] became a legman for Paul Coates, which led to writing and producing Coates' controversial television series, Confidential File, winner of three Emmy awards.
He [Walter Lippmann] studied at Harvard with [George] Santayana, took tea with William James, worked as a legman for Lincoln Steffens, debated socialism with [George] Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, was in Belgium when the Germans invaded and at the House of Commons when Britain declared war in 1914.
Their targets included kings and commoners, civilians and soldiers, military recruits and senior commanders, political legmen and party chairmen, businessmen and academicians, journalists and belletrists—and ultimately a train of victims' families: husbands, wives, and children.
gloss: A reporter who frequently travels to conduct research, interview witnesses, etc., and then conveys the information to a rewriteman who writes up the story.
pos: noun
examples: [page 136] This was my abrupt introduction to the system by which most of the live news is handled for the New York evening newspapers [...] Its continued use has bred up two distinct and separate types of news-specialists—the leg man, who gets the story, but rarely writes it; and the rewrite man, who writes the story but rarely gets it. [...] [page 140] City editors rail against these news combines, but it was the instinct of self-preservation that long ago drove the leg men into tight and fast organizations.
Morris Cramm was night legman for a columnist and worked from seven in the evening to five in the morning.
The guy looked and acted like a cheap hood when he was the head legman for one of the biggest of the syndicated columnists.
Many of the changes which have taken place in the newspaper field within the last fifty years have been in the direction of specialization. At the turn of the century, for example, a reporter got his stories, wrote them, and sometimes even made up his own headlines. Legmen and rewrite men were practically unknown.
LEG MEN cover local events and phone the information to a rewrite man. The leg man must have a good nose for news and the ability to give information over the phone quickly and accurately. He seldom writes his own stories.
They all said, "What can you expect when you put a leg-man into a spot like that?" and "How can a youngster like that, with only a year's experience in the newspaper business behind him, handle that sort of an assignment?" [...]
Of course newspapers have to have "leg men," especially for afternoon editions, who seldom write their own stories but have to telephone in facts to be hurried into type for press time. But leg men nowadays are expected to be literate, though sometimes barely.
[Allen] Raymond was the son of a Methodist lay preacher who traded his Ivy League, New England pedigree for a hardboiled journalistic persona cultivated over decades as a "legman," rewrite man, copyeditor, and reporter for a dozen urban newspapers, mostly in metropolitan New York.
Related words: legwork
shoe-leather
Translations: