Andrew Ross Sorkin
Encyclopedia
Andrew Ross Sorkin is a Gerald Loeb Award
-winning American
journalist, author and television personality. He is a financial columnist for The New York Times
and a co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box
. He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news service published by The New York Times. He wrote the 2009 bestselling book Too Big to Fail.
in 1995 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University
in 1999. Sorkin first joined The Times during his senior year in high school, as a student intern. He also worked for the paper while he was in college, publishing 71 articles before he graduated. He began by writing media and technology articles while assisting Stuart Elliott, The Times advertising columnist. Sorkin spent the summer of 1996 working for Business Week, before returning to The Times. He moved to London
for part of 1998. While there, he wrote about European business and technology for The Times, and then returned to Cornell to complete his studies. While at Cornell, Sorkin was a brother in Mu chapter of Sigma Pi fraternity.
Sorkin joined The Times full time in 1999 as the newspaper's European mergers and acquisitions reporter, based in London, and the following year became The Times chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, based in New York, a position he still holds. In addition, Sorkin started his financial-news website and email newsletter, DealBook, which he continues to edit. He writes a column by the same name (since April 2004) in the Tuesday editions (initially in Sunday editions). Sorkin also holds the title of assistant editor of business and finance news.
Sorkin has broken news of major mergers and acquisitions
, including Chase's acquisition of J.P. Morgan and Hewlett-Packard
's acquisition of Compaq
. He also led The Times' coverage of the world's largest takeover ever, Vodafone
's $183 billion hostile bid for Mannesmann. Additionally, he broke the news of I.B.M.'s sale of its PC business to Lenovo, Boston Scientific
's $25 billion acquisition of Guidant
and Symantec
's $13 billion deal for Veritas Software
, and reported on News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal
.
Most recently, Sorkin has reported on the Wall Street
financial crisis
, including the collapse of Bear Stearns
and Lehman Brothers
, and the government bailout of other major investment banks and AIG
. He has also written about the troubled American auto industry.
. He started it as a daily e-mail newsletter that provided summaries of financial news stories from around the Web. It was one of the first financial news aggregation services on the Internet and the first time The Times had included links to competing publications. In March 2006, Sorkin introduced a companion Web site, with updated news and original analysis throughout the day. The newsletter has more than 200,000 subscribers. In 2007, DealBook won a Webby Award for Best Business Blog and it won a SABEW award for overall excellence. In 2008, the site won an EPpy Award for Best Business Blog. A Rolling Stone columnist criticized the site for being sponsored by the same entities it purports to cover objectively, including but not limited to Goldman Sachs.
in addition to his duties at The Times. Sorkin has appeared on NBC
's Today show, Charlie Rose
and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
on PBS
, MSNBC's Hardball
and Morning Joe
, ABC's Good Morning America
, The Chris Matthews Show
, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher
, the BBC World Service
, Comedy Central's The Daily Show
and The Colbert Report, and was a frequent guest host of CNBC
's Squawk Box
before joining the ensemble. Sorkin also hosted a weekly seven-part, half-hour PBS talk-show series called It's the Economy, NY, which focused on how the evolving economic crisis was affecting New Yorkers.
October 20, 2009. It won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award
for best business book of the year, was on the shortlist for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize
, shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award
, and was on The New York Times Best Seller list (non-fiction hardcover and paperback) for six months. The book was adapted as a movie by HBO Films and premiered on HBO on May 23, 2011. The film was directed by Curtis Hanson
and the screenplay was written by Peter Gould. The cast included William Hurt
as Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary; Paul Giamatti
as Ben Bernanke
, the chairman of the Federal Reserve; Billy Crudup
as Timothy Geithner, the then president of the New York Federal Reserve; James Woods
as Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers
, Edward Asner as Warren Buffett
, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
; Cynthia Nixon
as Michele Davis
, assistant secretary for public affairs at Treasury; Bill Pullman
as Jamie Dimon
, CEO of JPMorgan Chase; as well as Topher Grace
as Jim Wilkinson (former U.S. government employee). Sorkin was a co-producer of the film and had a cameo appearance as a reporter.
, given for business journalism, in 2005 for breaking news, and in 2010 for his book Too Big to Fail He also won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers
Award for breaking news in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007, the World Economic Forum
named him a Young Global Leader. Also in 2007, SiliconAlleyInsider.com named Sorkin one of New York's "most influential scribes." In 2008, Vanity Fair
magazine named Sorkin as one of 40 new members of the "Next Establishment."
He is also recognized as one of Scarsdale High School's Distinguished Alumni.
in a November 17, 2008, Times column. Sorkin wrote: "At General Motors
, as of 2007, the average worker was paid about $70 an hour, including health care and pension costs." MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann
disputed that figure, featuring Sorkin in the show's "Worst Person in the World segment," stating that the figure was "mathematically and intellectually dishonest" because the cited wage includes health and benefit costs paid to retired workers and their surviving spouses, which are not paid to current workers.
Sorkin has also been criticized by the Times Public Editor
twice. His November 17, 2008 DealBook column called for GM's chief executive to be fired. Times executive editor Bill Keller
said that he had "stepped over the line" of the paper's standards, public editor
Clark Hoyt
reported on November 30, 2008.
The column was one of Sorkin's most popular, and reflected popular opinion that eventually led to GM CEO Rick Wagoner
resigning at the request of President Obama 5 months later.
Sorkin asserted in a column on April 13, 2010, that fellow New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
and economist Nouriel Roubini
had both "declared that we should follow the example of the Swedes by nationalizing the entire banking system." Krugman demanded an apology for misrepresenting his views stating, "I certainly never said anything like that." Sorkin responded by citing a passage from a Krugman article:
Hoyt later responded that Sorkin "over-simplified and got it wrong".
Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...
-winning American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist, author and television personality. He is a financial columnist for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and a co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box
Squawk Box
Squawk Box is a business news television program which airs at breakfast time on the CNBC network. The program is currently co-hosted by Joe Kernen, Rebecca Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Since debuting in 1995, the show has spawned a number of versions across CNBC's international channels, many of...
. He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news service published by The New York Times. He wrote the 2009 bestselling book Too Big to Fail.
Career
Sorkin graduated from Scarsdale High SchoolScarsdale High School
Scarsdale High School is a public high school in Scarsdale, New York, a coterminous town and village in Westchester County, New York. The school was founded in 1917...
in 1995 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
in 1999. Sorkin first joined The Times during his senior year in high school, as a student intern. He also worked for the paper while he was in college, publishing 71 articles before he graduated. He began by writing media and technology articles while assisting Stuart Elliott, The Times advertising columnist. Sorkin spent the summer of 1996 working for Business Week, before returning to The Times. He moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
for part of 1998. While there, he wrote about European business and technology for The Times, and then returned to Cornell to complete his studies. While at Cornell, Sorkin was a brother in Mu chapter of Sigma Pi fraternity.
Sorkin joined The Times full time in 1999 as the newspaper's European mergers and acquisitions reporter, based in London, and the following year became The Times chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, based in New York, a position he still holds. In addition, Sorkin started his financial-news website and email newsletter, DealBook, which he continues to edit. He writes a column by the same name (since April 2004) in the Tuesday editions (initially in Sunday editions). Sorkin also holds the title of assistant editor of business and finance news.
News articles
Sorkin has written, co-written or contributed to approximately 2000 articles for The Times, including more than 120 front-page articles and about 150 DealBook columns.Sorkin has broken news of major mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
, including Chase's acquisition of J.P. Morgan and Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
's acquisition of Compaq
Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
. He also led The Times' coverage of the world's largest takeover ever, Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
's $183 billion hostile bid for Mannesmann. Additionally, he broke the news of I.B.M.'s sale of its PC business to Lenovo, Boston Scientific
Boston Scientific
The Boston Scientific Corporation , is a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices whose products are used in a range of interventional medical specialties, including interventional cardiology, peripheral interventions, neuromodulation, neurovascular intervention,...
's $25 billion acquisition of Guidant
Guidant
Guidant Corporation, part of Boston Scientific and Abbott Labs, designs and manufactures artificial pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, stents, and other cardiovascular medical products. Their company headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Their main competitors are Medtronic, St...
and Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
's $13 billion deal for Veritas Software
VERITAS Software
Veritas Software Corp. was an international software company that was founded in 1983 as Tolerant Systems, renamed Veritas Software Corp. in 1989, and merged with Symantec in 2005. It was headquartered in Mountain View, California...
, and reported on News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
.
Most recently, Sorkin has reported on the Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
financial crisis
Financial crisis
The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these...
, including the collapse of Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns
The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. based in New York City, was a global investment bank and securities trading and brokerage, until its sale to JPMorgan Chase in 2008 during the global financial crisis and recession...
and Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
, and the government bailout of other major investment banks and AIG
AIG
AIG is American International Group, a major American insurance corporation.AIG may also refer to:* And-inverter graph, a concept in computer theory* Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization in the U.S.* Arta Industrial Group in Iran...
. He has also written about the troubled American auto industry.
DealBook
In October 2001, Sorkin created DealBook, a financial news service about deal making and Wall Street, published by The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. He started it as a daily e-mail newsletter that provided summaries of financial news stories from around the Web. It was one of the first financial news aggregation services on the Internet and the first time The Times had included links to competing publications. In March 2006, Sorkin introduced a companion Web site, with updated news and original analysis throughout the day. The newsletter has more than 200,000 subscribers. In 2007, DealBook won a Webby Award for Best Business Blog and it won a SABEW award for overall excellence. In 2008, the site won an EPpy Award for Best Business Blog. A Rolling Stone columnist criticized the site for being sponsored by the same entities it purports to cover objectively, including but not limited to Goldman Sachs.
Television
In July 2011, Sorkin became a co-anchor on CNBC's Squawk BoxSquawk Box
Squawk Box is a business news television program which airs at breakfast time on the CNBC network. The program is currently co-hosted by Joe Kernen, Rebecca Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Since debuting in 1995, the show has spawned a number of versions across CNBC's international channels, many of...
in addition to his duties at The Times. Sorkin has appeared on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's Today show, Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose (talk show)
Charlie Rose is an American television interview show, with Charlie Rose as executive producer, executive editor, and host. The show is syndicated...
and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
PBS NewsHour is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. The show is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a company co-owned by former anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, and Liberty Media, which owns a 65% stake in the...
on PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, MSNBC's Hardball
Hardball
Hardball or hard ball may refer to:in computers* Hardball, a computer game made for the Palm OS and similar to Breakout* Hardball! , a series of computer games about baseballin film...
and Morning Joe
Morning Joe
Morning Joe is a weekday morning talk show on MSNBC, with Joe Scarborough discussing the news of the day in a panel format with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. It was created as the replacement for Imus in the Morning, which was canceled in April 2007 after simulcasting on MSNBC since 1996...
, ABC's Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
, The Chris Matthews Show
The Chris Matthews Show
The Chris Matthews Show is a half-hour weekend news and political roundtable program produced by NBC News. It is taped in Washington, D.C., and nationally syndicated by NBC Universal Television Distribution...
, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher
Real Time with Bill Maher
Real Time with Bill Maher is a talk show that airs weekly on HBO, hosted by comedian and political satirist Bill Maher. Much like his previous show, Politically Incorrect on ABC , Real Time features a panel of guests that discuss current events in politics and the media...
, the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
, Comedy Central's The Daily Show
The Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
and The Colbert Report, and was a frequent guest host of CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
's Squawk Box
Squawk Box
Squawk Box is a business news television program which airs at breakfast time on the CNBC network. The program is currently co-hosted by Joe Kernen, Rebecca Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Since debuting in 1995, the show has spawned a number of versions across CNBC's international channels, many of...
before joining the ensemble. Sorkin also hosted a weekly seven-part, half-hour PBS talk-show series called It's the Economy, NY, which focused on how the evolving economic crisis was affecting New Yorkers.
Too Big to Fail
Sorkin's book on the Wall Street banking crisis, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves, was published by VikingViking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
October 20, 2009. It won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award
Gerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...
for best business book of the year, was on the shortlist for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize
Samuel Johnson Prize
The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction is one of the most prestigious prizes for non-fiction writing. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award and based on an anonymous donation. The prize is named after Samuel Johnson...
, shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award
Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award
Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award is an annual award given to the best business book of the year as determined by the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs. It aims to find the book that has ‘the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.’ The...
, and was on The New York Times Best Seller list (non-fiction hardcover and paperback) for six months. The book was adapted as a movie by HBO Films and premiered on HBO on May 23, 2011. The film was directed by Curtis Hanson
Curtis Hanson
Curtis Lee Hanson is an American film director, film producer and screenwriter. His directing work includes The Hand That Rocks the Cradle , L.A...
and the screenplay was written by Peter Gould. The cast included William Hurt
William Hurt
William McGill Hurt is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School, and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in the science-fiction feature Altered States , for which he received a Golden Globe nomination...
as Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary; Paul Giamatti
Paul Giamatti
Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...
as Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke
Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist, and the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. During his tenure as Chairman, Bernanke has overseen the response of the Federal Reserve to late-2000s financial crisis....
, the chairman of the Federal Reserve; Billy Crudup
Billy Crudup
William Gaither "Billy" Crudup is an American actor of film and stage. He is well known for his roles as guitarist Russell Hammond in Almost Famous, Will Bloom in Big Fish, and Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke. He also starred in the 2007 romantic comedy film Dedication, alongside Mandy Moore...
as Timothy Geithner, the then president of the New York Federal Reserve; James Woods
James Woods
James Howard Woods is an American film, stage and television actor. Woods is known for starring in critically acclaimed films such as Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Nixon, Ghosts of Mississippi, Casino, and in the television legal drama Shark. He has won three Emmy Awards, and has gained...
as Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
, Edward Asner as Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely regarded as one of the most successful investors in the world. Often introduced as "legendary investor, Warren Buffett", he is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is...
, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, that oversees and manages a number of subsidiary companies. The company averaged an annual growth in book value of 20.3% to its shareholders for the last 44 years,...
; Cynthia Nixon
Cynthia Nixon
Cynthia Ellen Nixon is an American actress, known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbes in the HBO series Sex and the City . She has received two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and a Grammy Award....
as Michele Davis
Michele Davis
Michele A. Davis served in a number of senior communications positions in the U.S. Treasury Department, Fannie Mae, and the White House during the George W. Bush era from 2001 to January 20, 2009. In her last government position, she served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Director of...
, assistant secretary for public affairs at Treasury; Bill Pullman
Bill Pullman
William James "Bill" Pullman is an American film, television, and stage actor. Pullman made his film debut in the supporting role of Earl Mott in the 1986 film Ruthless People. He has since gone on to star in other films, including Spaceballs, Independence Day, Lost Highway, Casper and Scary Movie 4...
as Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon
James "Jamie" Dimon is a business executive. He is the current chairman, president and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and previously served as a Class A director of the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve, a three year term which started January 2007...
, CEO of JPMorgan Chase; as well as Topher Grace
Topher Grace
Christopher John "Topher" Grace is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Eric Forman on the Fox sitcom That '70s Show, Eddie Brock/Venom in the Sam Raimi film Spider-Man 3, and Edwin in the 2010 film Predators....
as Jim Wilkinson (former U.S. government employee). Sorkin was a co-producer of the film and had a cameo appearance as a reporter.
Awards
Sorkin won the Gerald Loeb AwardGerald Loeb Award
The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was established in 1957 by Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of...
, given for business journalism, in 2005 for breaking news, and in 2010 for his book Too Big to Fail He also won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers
Society of American Business Editors and Writers
The Society of American Business Editors and Writers is an association of business journalists. Its headquarters is at the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri....
Award for breaking news in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007, the World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
named him a Young Global Leader. Also in 2007, SiliconAlleyInsider.com named Sorkin one of New York's "most influential scribes." In 2008, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
magazine named Sorkin as one of 40 new members of the "Next Establishment."
He is also recognized as one of Scarsdale High School's Distinguished Alumni.
Notable columns
Sorkin argued for a government-sponsored bankruptcy for General MotorsGeneral Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
in a November 17, 2008, Times column. Sorkin wrote: "At General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
, as of 2007, the average worker was paid about $70 an hour, including health care and pension costs." MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann
Keith Theodore Olbermann is an American political commentator and writer. He has been the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of Current TV's weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, since June 20, 2011...
disputed that figure, featuring Sorkin in the show's "Worst Person in the World segment," stating that the figure was "mathematically and intellectually dishonest" because the cited wage includes health and benefit costs paid to retired workers and their surviving spouses, which are not paid to current workers.
Sorkin has also been criticized by the Times Public Editor
Public Editor
The job of the public editor is to supervise the implementation of proper journalism ethics at a newspaper, and to identify and examine critical errors or omissions, and to act as a liaison to the public. They do this primarily through a regular feature on a newspaper's editorial page. The position...
twice. His November 17, 2008 DealBook column called for GM's chief executive to be fired. Times executive editor Bill Keller
Bill Keller
Bill Keller is a writer for the The New York Times, of which Keller was the executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, Keller announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer...
said that he had "stepped over the line" of the paper's standards, public editor
Public Editor
The job of the public editor is to supervise the implementation of proper journalism ethics at a newspaper, and to identify and examine critical errors or omissions, and to act as a liaison to the public. They do this primarily through a regular feature on a newspaper's editorial page. The position...
Clark Hoyt
Clark Hoyt
- Personal life and Professional career :Clark Hoyt is an American journalist who was the public editor of the New York Times, serving as the "readers' representative." He was the newspaper's third public editor, or ombudsman, after Daniel Okrent and Byron Calame...
reported on November 30, 2008.
"Subtlety and restraint are important in news columns," he told me. Business columnists must build a case through reporting that can lead a reader to a conclusion, Keller said. Op-ed columnists have "greater license to write from an ideological viewpoint and be prescriptive."
The column was one of Sorkin's most popular, and reflected popular opinion that eventually led to GM CEO Rick Wagoner
Rick Wagoner
George Richard "Rick" Wagoner, Jr. is an American businessman and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. Wagoner resigned as Chairman and CEO at General Motors on March 29, 2009, at the request of the White House...
resigning at the request of President Obama 5 months later.
Sorkin asserted in a column on April 13, 2010, that fellow New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
and economist Nouriel Roubini
Nouriel Roubini
Nouriel Roubini is an American economist. He claims to have predicted both the collapse of the United States housing market and the worldwide recession which started in 2008. He teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business and is the chairman of Roubini Global Economics, an economic...
had both "declared that we should follow the example of the Swedes by nationalizing the entire banking system." Krugman demanded an apology for misrepresenting his views stating, "I certainly never said anything like that." Sorkin responded by citing a passage from a Krugman article:
Why not just go ahead and nationalize? Remember, the longer we live with zombie banks, the harder it will be to end the economic crisis.
Hoyt later responded that Sorkin "over-simplified and got it wrong".