A week after the release of his book on the Wall Street meltdown, The New York Times’ star mergers-and-acquisitions reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, is attracting uncharacteristic disdain from colleagues who claim he’s a glory hog.
“He’s self-promotional,” sniped one insider, who described Sorkin as “a very divisive person in the newsroom.”
Added another insider: “Let’s just say he’s not a team player,” and that in his zest for scoops during the highly competitive M&A boom years he became “an apologist for everyone on Wall Street who created this mess.”
The unusually harsh criticism comes just days after Sorkin released his highly anticipated book, “Too Big To Fail,” which chronicles the darkest days of the financial crisis last fall. The complaints appear to center on tactics Sorkin might have used at the expense of colleagues to fill his 600-page book.
The biggest blow-up focuses on the book’s details of waivers obtained by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to talk to his former firm, Goldman Sachs, and its CEO Lloyd Blankfein, the day after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008.
That waiver was the subject of a New York Times lead story on Aug. 9 that was written by Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta Jr.
The story said Paulson was granted waivers by the Treasury and the White House Counsel’s office in order to communicate with Blankfein.
Times insiders grumbled that there was no credit to the Times story in the book, and some wondered if Sorkin used his star reporter status to get a peek at work compiled by his colleagues.
Insiders told The Post that senior editors are looking into the allegations.
Sorkin insisted he actually beat his colleagues to the punch through his own Freedom of Information Act requests to the government, and said his scoop didn’t appear in the Times because he was on a three-month leave of absence from June through August, when he handed the book to the publisher.
Morgenson and Van Natta declined to comment.
Reached yesterday, Sorkin said, “I hate to disappoint you, but I haven’t heard about any flap inside The Times.
“I had gotten copies of Paulson’s calendars and the waivers through Freedom of Information Act requests. I received the documents and had filed the chapter that included them in late July weeks before The Times article was published.
“I have spoken to Don and told him I’d be happy to include a citation in the 40 pages of end notes as a courtesy in the next printing.”
It’s not the first time Sorkin’s book has ruffled feathers. Last week, CNBC reporter Charlie Gasparino cried foul over a passage in the book that asserts Blankfein once turned off the TV in his office because, according to the book, he “was so disgusted with what he believed was Charlie Gasparino’s ‘rumor-mongering.’ ”
While officials at Goldman have confirmed the account is correct, the “rumor-mongering” quote may not be, prompting Gasparino’s lawyer to request a correction. keith.kelly@nypost.com