Word: legmen
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Ambassadors are legmen in gold braid. One of the best reporters of them all is Great Britain's Ambassador to Germany Sir Nevile Henderson. The reason the 75,000-copy first printing of the British Blue Book, including the reports he sent his Government from Berlin from May 28 to Sept. 1, sold like hot cakes in London last week was therefore not hard to find. He had turned in a world scoop, a still-warm drop of the very blood of history, a terrifying picture of how war is born, some penetrating glimpses of Field Marshal Hermann Goring...
...story had been forbidden fruit in news rooms. By an agreement almost unique in U. S. journalism, editors had promised the Department of Justice not to print reports of ransom money turning up. For more than two years city editors dutifully filed away such tips as their legmen brought them...
...desks, which lacks two drawers, sits a dreary-looking little man with keen eyes, thinning blond hair, deep lines around his mouth. He wears a grey alpaca office coat. He is Arthur Francis Corrigan, 44, "boss" of the press room and dean of legmen in The Times Square and Hell's Kitchen districts. Last week the press room boys gave "the boss" a party because he had just rounded out 20 years on the job, ten of them at West Side Court. A magistrate was toastmaster, two others made speeches. Six deputy district attorneys, many a police inspector, dozens...
Like most City News legmen, "Boss"' Corrigan, who started as an office boy, rarely wrote a story in his 20 years. He gathers his data from the complaint room, from the little Press table in the court room, from innumerable policemen, lawyers, court attendants, judges of his acquaintance. He makes copious notes, descends to his dungeon desk and telephones his office. Far downtown near Park Row one of four lightning-fast rewrite men takes Reporter Corrigan's tale, whips it into a precise, minutely detailed, colorless but accurate story. Page by page it is teletyped to the newspaper...
...members.* The most anonymous news service in the world, it never receives credit in print, never gives or gets a byline. Often City News merely supplements what a newspaper's own man gathers by himself. Without it, however, each paper would have to hire 12 or 15 extra legmen, could never send large staffs out of town on big stories. In a pinch, a Manhattan editor could get out a presentable paper with only City News and a couple of good rewrite...