How the NY Times covered the financial crisis

Matt Giles of The New York Times writes about how the paper covered the economic crisis of 2008.

Giles writes, “Fueled by pizza, Mr. Sorkin, Mr. Dash and the reporter Ben White huddled around Ms. Anderson’s second-floor desk.

“‘I was nine months pregnant with my first child, and I was the only woman in the world who ever thought, ‘Please don’t go into labor, I want to keep writing this story!’’ Ms. Anderson recalled.

“The reporters pieced together an article explaining the implications of the weekend’s events while Mr. Ingrassia finessed the copy to meet the final 11:30 p.m. deadline, only to be interrupted when Mr. Sorkin ran over with a last-minute edit. He had just spoken with one of the handful of people familiar with all of the dominoes in play, who warned the horizon was still very much unsettled: ‘You don’t understand how bad this AIG thing is. That’s the next levee to break.’ ‘

“Mr. Sorkin and Mr. Dash didn’t leave until after 1:45 a.m. on Sept. 15 when Lehman officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest filing in U.S. history.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.