What Makes Andrew Run?

Is Andrew Ross Sorkin the future of the New York Times?

To the extent the paper of record (or, frankly, any media company) has a future, he might be, according to Gabriel Sherman's New York Magazine profile of the 32-year-old DealBook creator and Too Big to Fail author.

But to what extent the Times' mission and core values remain intact going forward is one of the questions raised by Sherman as he offers one of those build-up/take-down, inside-baseball media articles journalists love to read but (sometimes) hate to write.

Sorkin is portrayed as many things in the piece, from well-dressed (“You have to dress like them" Sorkin tells Sherman about his banker and C-suite sources) to something of a wunderkind. Of the 18-year-old Sorkin we learn, "Officially, the Times didn’t have a high-school-internship program, but Sorkin persuaded them to let him in the door anyway."He's also an unusually entrepreneurial reporter known for "pitching revenue-generating ideas at a time when the paper desperately needs new sources of cash." (Among those ideas are "special DealBook sections in the print paper, a blog, conferences, even a $5,000-per-year premium subscription…")

We also learn he's extremely well-compensated. According to Sherman, "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." This matters, especially since the paper is looking to eliminate 100 jobs in the near future.

Not bad for a reporter who was mostly known—until the last couple of years when his beat (Mergers and Acquisitions) blew up, then collapsed—for being the accidental recipient of his colleague Maureen Dowd's "randy" emails intended for West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, according to a frquently cited rumor from the dawn of our digital age. (May 2001, to be precise.)

In Sherman's rendering, Sorkin is also something of a Sammy Glick figure—a young reporter who bigfoot's A1 stories and turns in sloppy work. "When Andrew had a Sunday business column and he’d drop a thinly reported or loosely written piece on the desk at the last minute on Friday night," Sunday 'Business' editor Tim O'Brien tells Sherman on the record (!). "[I]t made us concerned about our production schedule and, occasionally, about the credibility of our page."

Then there's the claim that he allegedly grabbed at two more seasoned colleagues' research about Goldman Sachs for his book, a growing scandal first reported by the New York Post's Keith Kelly and pooh-poohed by Times media columnist David Carr on Twitter before prompting an actual investigation by Times executive editor Bill Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson, according to Gawker's John Cook.

But in a profile full of paper cuts, the one that slices Sorkin deepest is the claim that he cozies up to powerful sources and treats them "with kid gloves," an allegation difficult to refute (at least anecdotally) from the Vanity Fair-hosted party for Too Big to Fail, which was attended by nearly every bigwig in town, from JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon to Morgan Stanley's John Mack. Warren Buffett sent his regrets in the form of a comical oversize telegram with his congratulations.

"There’s something about his boyish, Jimmy Stewart charm that the older men he deals with find incredibly winning," Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter told Sherman.

Unnamed sources who talked to Sherman compared Sorkin to formerly winning personality Judith Miller, the Times reporter whose W.M.D. reporting was compromised by her proximity to her sources, or, in her colleague Maureen Dowd's memorable description from 2005, "her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity, and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur." Sherman suggests that, like Miller, Sorkin might've treated some his sources with those aforementioned "kid gloves"—even when it was time to take the gloves off and nail them for being "the very actors in the executive suites who triggered the collapse."

That's a pretty damning comparison, especially since Miller (along with Jayson Blair, but not for the same reasons) is most often cited for hurting the overall credibility of an institution that seemed—journalistically, at least—above criticism by Times haters and disappointed longtime admirers alike.

What does Sorkin think of Sherman's piece? It's a good question—and probably one that will be asked of him in a Times-hosted 'Talk to the Times' online chat scheduled for today. Whatever Sorkin says, it won't silence his critics, but it might help to sell some books: Too Big to Fail is already on the Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Sellers list. The book's success—and its author's—is pretty much assured.