Andrew Ross Sorkin

Andrew Ross Sorkin

Sorkin in 2012
Born February 19, 1977
New York, New York
Occupation Reporter and Columnist for The New York Times
Alma mater Cornell University
Notable works Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves
Spouse Pilar Jenny Queen (m. 2007)

Andrew Ross Sorkin (born February 19, 1977) is a Gerald Loeb Award-winning American journalist and author. 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 bestselling book Too Big to Fail (2009) and co-produced a movie adaptation of the book for HBO Films (2011).

Life and career

Sorkin was born in New York, the son of Joan Ross Sorkin, a playwright, and Laurence T. Sorkin, a partner in a law firm.[1] Sorkin graduated from Scarsdale High School (1995) and earned a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University (1999). Sorkin first joined The New York Times as a student intern during his senior year in high school. 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 the advertising columnist, Stuart Elliott. 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. At Cornell, he was Vice President 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 married Pilar Jenny Queen in 2007.[1]

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, 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.

On the PRISM (surveillance program) and Edward Snowden situation, Sorkin said "I would arrest him and now I'd almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who seems to be out there, he wants to help him get to Ecuador."[2] The statement prompted Glenn Greenwald to tweet "Should the NYT editors & reporters who published classified information about false Iraq WMD claims be arrested?" at Sorkin.[3] Reviewing his record after his anti-Greenwald outburst, Matt Taibbi described Sorkin as "a shameless, ball-gargling prostitute for Wall Street".[4]

DealBook

In October 2001, Sorkin created DealBook, a financial news service about deal making and Wall Street, published by The New York Times.[5] 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[6] and it won a SABEW award for overall excellence.[7] In 2008, the site won an EPpy Award for Best Business Blog.[8] 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.[9][10]

Television

In July 2011, Sorkin became a co-anchor on CNBC's Squawk Box 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.[11] More recently, Sorkin was referenced in a 2013 episode of Breaking Bad.

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 Viking October 20, 2009.[12] 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, Chief of Staff to the Treasury Secretary. Sorkin was a co-producer of the film and had a cameo appearance as a reporter.[13]

Awards

Sorkin won the Gerald Loeb Award, given for business journalism, in 2005 for breaking news, and in 2010 for his book Too Big to Fail[14] 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.[15] Also in 2007, SiliconAlleyInsider.com named Sorkin one of New York's "most influential scribes."[16] In 2008, Vanity Fair magazine named Sorkin as one of 40 new members of the "Next Establishment."[17] He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is also recognized as one of Scarsdale High School's Distinguished Alumni.

In popular culture

In Granite State, the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, Sorkin is briefly referenced. He is said to have written an op-ed in The New York Times accusing fictional entrepreneurs Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz of making donations to drug rehabilitation centers in the hopes of cleansing their company's image after the Walter White scandal. Sorkin actually went on and wrote the entire fictional article afterwards. [18]

Rare congenital abnormality

Sorkin has Coloboma.[19]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Pilar Queen, Andrew Sorkin". The New York Times. 2007-06-10.
  2. Greenwald: Beltway media types are ‘courtiers to power’, Washington Post, By Erik Wemple, Published: June 24, 2013, retrieved from washingtonpost.com on 6/24/2013
  3. Andrew Ross Sorkin: 'I'd Almost Arrest Glenn Greenwald' (VIDEO)
  4. Matt Taibbi (27 June 2013). "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism". rollingstone.com. Retrieved 27 June 2013.
  5. "More About DealBook - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com". Dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com. 2006-03-01. Archived from the original on 9 May 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  6. "Webby Nominees & Winners". Webbyawards.com. Archived from the original on 20 May 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  7. Sabew.Com
  8. Royal.Reliaserve.Com
  9. "The Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin Gives Goldman a Rubdown". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2010-06-13.
  10. "The 'Big Short' and Goldman's New Story". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2010-06-13.
  11. "It's The Economy, NY". Thirteen. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  12. "''Too Big to Fail'', Andrew Ross Sorkin, Penguin Group (USA)". Us.penguingroup.com. Retrieved 2010-05-22.. ISBN 978-0-670-02125-3
  13. "Too Big to Fail (2012)".
  14. "2005 Winners | UCLA Anderson School of Management". Anderson.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  15. "World Economic Forum - Search tool". Weforum.org. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  16. Silicon Alley Insider (2007-11-08). "23. Andrew Ross Sorkin". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  17. Vanity Fair.Com
  18. "Breaking Bad: The Gray Matter of Charity".
  19. https://twitter.com/andrewrsorkin/status/267970044074541057 Twitter

External links

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