Word: legman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cozying up with sources is par for the gossip course, and Smith has her own techniques. "My effort is to turn everybody I know into a legman for me," she says. Reporters at newspapers, magazines and the three networks, she claims, often leak snippets to her. Agents of all kinds drop nuggets, as do friends, parties and openings. Public relations people are "mostly so inept that you should just forget it totally." Though, in truth, Liz has been known to run their press releases verbatim, as well as to promote shamelessly her favorite restaurants, charities and plays...
Safire entered Syracuse University on scholarship, but two years later a summer job turned him into a 19-year-old dropout. Through his brother Leonard, Safire was hired as legman for journalistic impresario Tex McCrary, then writing a personality column for the New York Herald Tribune, acting as host on a radio show and dabbling in G.O.P. politics. Safire soon decided that he "could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels." Safire spent most of the 1950s working for the dynamic, yet erratic McCrary, goading him into public relations, which Safire...