The HBO show set in a cable news station, whose characters contend with real-life news events, has not had an easy ride: from the off, it has dramatically divided opinion and inspired hate-watching among media types who have accused Sorkin of lofty moralising about the state of journalism.
He hasn't read all the scathing reviews. There are so many of them, you just can't, he notes, drily. Nor does he seem overly perturbed.
"There is going to be a group of people who believe this show is about me telling journalists how they should have done their job, and that I am leveraging hindsight into heroism, but that is simply not the case," he says. And he is unapologetic about its romantic idealism.
"We are living in cynical times; everything is ironic, everything is an eye-roll. I get that a show like this may seem square and hopelessly uncool, but I am fine with that," he says.
What does get his goat, however, is the accusation that he has a woman problem, and that his female characters in The Newsroom are incompetent ditzes, played for laughs.
"The people who see that the women on the show are somehow less capable than the men are looking for that, with increasing indignation, and it's not there."
In its six-episode swansong, The Newsroom is dealing with everything from Edward Snowden-esque whistleblowers to citizen journalism and the dangers of social media as news dissemination.
Twitter, in particular, takes a pasting. "To me, it's not communication," Sorkin sighs. "It's just people shouting quips into the air. I can't think of anything worth saying that you can say in 140 characters."
Arguably America's foremost screenwriter, Sorkin has successfully navigated the big and small screen over the past 20 years, first breaking big with the 1992 film adaptation of his own play, A Few Good Men, before The West Wing made him a household name.
Overall, though, he has prospered more in film (The American President, Charlie Wilson's War and Moneyball) than in TV: while The West Wing won a record 27 Emmy awards over seven seasons, Sports Night lasted only two before it was cancelled, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip lasted only one.
And now he is retiring from television writing, at least for the foreseeable future. "If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it's delayed. You can't do that with television, you have air dates to meet."
And Sorkin frequently finds himself stuck. "I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank," he laments. He has several unsticking tactics: taking numerous showers, and driving endlessly around Los Angeles. But still, the time pressures of television only allow for a few days in the bathroom or car per episode. "So you have to write even when you are not writing well. And then you have to point a camera at it, and broadcast it to people. And that is just brutal to me."
His Steve Jobs film, Jobs, has faced hitches beyond his control, chiefly a lack of leading man. Leonardo DiCaprio and, more recently, Christian Bale, pulled out, the latter because of the sheer demands of the role: "It's a 181-page script, about 100 of it is that one character," says Sorkin.
The frontrunner is now believed to be Michael Fassbender. Sorkin says only that an announcement is imminent. Directed by Danny Boyle, the film is not a biopic but is in three acts, each set backstage before three of Jobs' major product launches spanning 16 years.
"In the case of Steve Jobs, it's the relationships he had, particularly with his daughter, Lisa, that drew me to it."
Jobs initially denied paternity of his daughter, now 36, though they later reconnected and she lived with him in her teens. "I was very grateful that she was willing to spend time with me. She is the heroine of the movie."
TV profile
Who: Aaron Sorkin
What: The Newsroom
Where and When: Thursdays, 8.30pm, SoHo.
