Sorkin recounts how he got his start at The New York Times -- at age 18

It was 2:30 a.m. Sept. 15, 2008 -- 45 minutes after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, five hours after Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch, and a day and a half before the government bailed out AIG. And New York Times business journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin '99 found himself in the middle of one of the greatest financial crises in history.

"I had been writing the front-page story that was going to appear in The New York Times the next morning about this remarkable weekend, a transformation on Wall Street, the end of an era and, frankly, what I thought was going to be the end of the world," said Sorkin to a packed auditorium in Kennedy Hall Oct. 20.

One year later, Sorkin published his award-winning book about the crisis: "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves," to be adapted for HBO with such cast members as Paul Giamatti, Ed Asner, William Hurt, James Woods and Cynthia Nixon.

"This book is about people who thought they were too big to fail," Sorkin said. "It's a story about leadership, it's a story about humanity, it's a story about the fragility of all of us."

Research for the book required interviews with corporate and government officials; while some were truthful, others tried to spin their stories or simply refused to talk at all. Sorkin emphasized the importance of truthful reporting and persistence in helping even the most private individuals find ways to share their experiences. "My job was to keep them honest, and I hope that I was able to do that," said Sorkin.

Sorkin, now the chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, assistant editor of business and finance news for The New York Times, as well as the founder and editor of DealBook, The Times' daily financial online and e-mail newsletter, was a communication major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

"If you had ever told me I'd be standing here, I would have laughed at you," Sorkin said, noting he spent much of his time at Cornell writing for the Times, which published 71 of his articles before he graduated.

He said he "always had a passion for journalism and the media," and founded a sports magazine at age 15. "It was a remarkable education in how persistence, more than talent, really can get you much further than you could ever imagine," Sorkin said. "People don't like to say no."

When the magazine failed three years later and Sorkin needed a summer job, he wrote Stuart Elliot, the advertising columnist for the Times -- persistently.

Elliot finally accepted him as an unpaid summer employee. "I was ecstatic," Sorkin said. "I was now going to The New York Times for five weeks to Xerox and staple. [Elliot] actually got me a business card that said 'Xerox and Staple Bitch.'"

But not for long. After a chance encounter with an editor by the fax machine, Sorkin wrote an article for the paper that caught the attention of the editors in chief. Soon, he was promoted to "reporter" and has worked for the Times ever since.

"If you actually have a passion about something, and you care about it, and you really want to do it, you can," Sorkin said to the students in the audience. "Send the e-mail. Make the phone call. People do not want to say no."

Michelle Spektor '12 is a student writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.

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Blaine Friedlander