NYT's Sorkin and his importance

Gabriel Sherman profiles New York Times mergers and acquisitions reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin in the latest issue of New York magazine.

Sherman writes, “To write about the game, you have to know the game. Sorkin has a deep and highly particularized knowledge of the deal-making landscape, a pressurized beat populated by PR advisers, bankers, lawyers, where information translates into dollars and everyone has a financial stake in an outcome. Sorkin communicates with his sources as an equal. ‘Oftentimes when you talk to reporters you have the sense they don’t understand what the deal is about. You don’t have that problem with Andrew,’ says Jonathan Knee, a senior managing director at Evercore Partners, a boutique investment firm. There’s also serious shoe leather at work. He’s often up at 6 a.m., working the phones, sometimes fielding 200 calls in a day. ‘I get such a high off the day-to-day, moment-to-moment,’ Sorkin says. ‘I love being at that sort of nexus of knowing where the deal is and what’s coming next and how it’s going to work and the structure of the deal.’

“He’s open about the fact that he’s not adversarial. ‘I don’t come to the table with an ax to grind—that helps me,’ Sorkin says, sipping an iced coffee. He has another crucial advantage in the world he’s traveling in: He gives good son. ‘There’s something about his boyish, Jimmy Stewart charm that the older men he deals with find incredibly winning,’ Graydon Carter says.

“In March 2006, when the Times launched the DealBook blog on the paper’s website, it vastly expanded Sorkin’s footprint at the paper. The blog, one of the Times’ most ambitious new-media ventures up to that point, featured commentary on breaking financial news. Sorkin now manages a staff of eight DealBook contributors. Three years ago, he was also promoted to management, which meant he could be paid far above the Times’ strict union-mandated salary scale. Sources say he earns $250,000, including a bonus that is based, in part, on the financial performance of the various DealBook properties (Sorkin disputes the number, but won’t be more specific). He is among the highest-paid staffers at the paper.”