Merriam Webster’s online dictionary describes a legman as 1: “A reporter assigned usually to gather information.” 2: “An assistant who performs various subordinate tasks (as gathering information or running errands.”
I thought of both definitions when I read Ethan Epstein’s December 15, 2009, post at True/Slant headlined “Did Andrew Sullivan Commit Journalistic Fraud?” It was prompted by Patrick Appel’s December 12, 2009, post at The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan’s blog, headlined “Minding The Store.” Appel wrote, among other things:
As always, it a pleasure to step in while Andrew gets some much needed rest. Guest-blogging is not all that different than my day-to-day activities on the Dish – 24 of the 50 posts currently on the front page were written by me. All the substantive posts are Andrew's work, but it's my and Chris's job to read through the blogosphere and pick out the choicest bits. Andrew edits, approves, and spins what we find, but the illusion of an all-reading blogger is maintained by employing two extra sets of eyes.
This prompted Epstein to write:
So now we know: despite the fact that all of the work on Sullivan’s page appears under his byline, nearly half of it is not written by him. Of course, Appel tries to defend this conduct, claiming that Sullivan writes all of the “substantive” posts. (A hilarious contention, considering that very little of what Sullivan produces could conceivably be considered “substantive.”) But how are we to judge what is considered “substantive” – a purely subjective term? Simply put, how are we to know what is actually Sullivan’s own work, and what isn’t? All we know for sure is that much of the “work” Sullivan publishes under his name is ghostwritten. This is journalistic fraud, plain and simple.
While I respect Epstein’s opinion, I disagree with the conclusion he reached regarding Sullivan based on a reading of Appel’s post. What Appel described is simply the work of a legman, to use an anachronistic journalism term that’s not used much these days in newsrooms. Some famous legmen/women were Jack Anderson and Ellen Warren. According to Janan Hanna, Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University and DePaul University, the late Mike Royko had 16 of them over a 30-year period at three Chicago newspapers. She was one of them. They did the actual reporting. Royko did the writing. And he was a damn good at it.
Chicago Tribune reporter Liam T.A. Ford, whose book on Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City was published in 2009, was a legman for Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass. There are many more I can cite who do what Appel does. Some even write column items and do rewrites. It’s like an apprenticeship. So, given that, I would need more than the above to conclude that Sullivan is committing “journalistic fraud, plain and simple.” Of course, what was considered standard practice when I first got into journalism in the 1970s might be considered fraud in the Internet Age. Maybe it was fraud then and we just didn’t know it.
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