legmen

Noun

legman (plural legmen)

1. 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.
   • 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...1953 May, Dwight Boyer, “Giant Jaws Unload Ore Ship”, in H[enry] H[aven] Windsor, Jr., editor, Popular Mechanics, volume 99, number 5, Chicago, Ill.: Popular Mechanics Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 76

   Synonyms:

   gofer

2. A reporter who frequently travels to conduct research, interview witnesses, etc., and then conveys the information to a rewriteman who writes up the story.
   • [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...1913, Irvin S[hrewsbury] Cobb, The Saturday Evening Post, volume 185, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: Curtis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 23; republished in “The Third Stick”, in Stickfuls...

See all 3 meanings of legman