rewriteman

Noun

rewriteman (plural rewritemen)

1. A newspaper reporter who crafts stories from information reported by others, such as legmen.
   • 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...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...
   • 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...1954, Edmond D[avid] Coblentz, “Introduction: The Drift toward Specialization”, in Edmond D. Coblentz, editor, Newsmen Speak: Journalists on Their Craft, Berkeley; Los Angeles, Calif.; London...