Dorfman looking for a job, regrets mistake from 30-plus years ago

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

One of the country’s legendary business journalists, Dan Dorfman, says he’s still reporting on the current Wall Street upheaval despite not having a publication that will publish the stories.

“The frustrating thing right now is I’m not writing for any publication, and I have stories,” said Dorfman, 77, in an interview Saturday. “I have stories. I have a couple of newsbreaking stories, each of which, I’m convinced, would make the front pages of many newspapers.

“I’m having some exploratory conversations with a few publications. But everyone is telling me how bad things are. It’s a very frustrating experience, not being able to write.”

Dorfman had been writing in recent years for the New York Sun, but that paper stopped publishing at the end of September.

Dorfman is best known for his five-decade long career in business journalism, which included stops at The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, USA Today, Money magazine, New York magazine, Esquire magazine, CNN, the New York Daily News and the now-defunct Financial World.

In 1995, at the height of his career when he was writing for Money and appearing on CNBC, BusinessWeek wrote two stories critical of Dorfman for using a PR person who represented several companies as a source. The PR person later pled guilty to two counts of securities fraud.

Although Dorfman was never investigated, Money fired him in early 1996 for failing to disclose news sources. “It very nearly destroyed my career,” said Dorfman. Since that time, he has worked for Web site JagNotes, Financial World and the Sun.

Dorfman later added, “I told Business Week I had never been contacted by the Justice Department, but that’s not what they wanted to hear and never included that in the story. If you asked them about it today, they would simply use the old phony standby and say they stand by their story. What else could they say? Since 13 years have passed and no one has ever contacted me from the Justice Department before or after that story, what does that tell you about the accuracy?”

Dorfman, however, did express some regret from buying stock in the 1970s, when he was writing the “Heard on the Street” column for The Journal. He was fired from that job as a result.

“I regret buying that new issue when I was at The Wall Street Journal,” said Dorfman. “That was stupid. But at that time, I didn’t think that was wrong. I think going from USA Today to Time Warner (Money magazine) was also awful. I shouldn’t have done that. I regret those things. I also regret the fact that there’s so much jealousy in journalism.”

When asked how he would like to be remembered, Dorfman said, “On my tombstone, I would like it to read, ‘Here lies Dan Dorfman, a reporter who cared.’ All that I’ve tried to do is to give to the masses what was known to a chosen few. That was my contribution. I heard information, like the Time Warner offer, by a relatively few people, but after I reported it, it was known by everybody. ‘Dan Dorfman, a reporter who cared and who tried.’ I think that’s good enough.”

The entire interview transcript with Dorfman has been posted on www.bizjournalismhistory.org. Click on “History Q&A” at the bottom of the home page.