Andrew Ross Sorkin was Jared Kushner's First Choice to Run the New York Observer [Recruiting]

Observer owner Jared Kushner tried twice to recruit New York Times wunderkind Andrew Ross Sorkin to take over the newspaper, according to New York.

The 28-year-old publisher and the 32-year-old reporter and author of Too Big to Fail talked as recently as last month about the top editor job at the Observer, Gabriel Sherman reports. But Sorkin demurred, and some Observer staffers speculate that talks may have stalled because Sorkin wanted an equity stake in the paper. Kushner settled on former Portfolio editor Kyle Pope, who must be feeling really good right about now, yesterday.

Oddly and without elaboration, Sherman mentions that one reason Sorkin might not have been interested was his "unusual incentive arrangements with the Times." Huh? What's that all about, then?

Another reason Sorkin might not have taken the job is that he would no longer be able to call New York Times editors to ask them for access to documents that he would later use as "source documents" in his book.

While we're on the subject of the Observer, the paper is flogging an Observer Living panel—that would be Kushner's real estate events venture—later this month featuring none other than Ivanka Trump. Come meet the publisher's wife! Placed next to a story on the hiring of Pope, it's starting to look like the New York Observer is a newspaper about the New York Observer.