Gasparino, Arbiter of Cred

August 10, 2009
 

So CNBC’s Charlie Gasparino doesn’t like The Audit—or at least Audit Big Chief Starkman.

The feeling’s not exactly mutual. I actually like Gasparino for his blue-collar roots (few and far between amongst big-time finance reporters, lemme tell you) and his screw-you, Type A reporting techniques—ones that these days, alas, are something of a throwback to a bygone rough-and-tumble era of journalism.

(Starkman ran home to take a sedative and couldn’t be reached for comment.)

I sat next to Gasparino my first month as a staffer at The Wall Street Journal and thought several times he was going to reach through the phone and bash in some sniveling Wall Street exec’s face. You’ve got to admire that in a reporter. Would that more of us journalists had his pugnacity.

Of course, such things tend to go overboard, and we’ve called him out for silly commentaries.

Gasparino is CNBC, after all.

Sign up for CJR's daily email

So if we’re talking about CNBC and arbiters of credibility in business journalism, this is a good opportunity to revisit Moe Tkacik’s “Waiting for CNBC” from the May/June issue of Columbia Journalism Review for an in-depth look at what passes for journalism on the network.

UPDATE: Changed the headline to liven it up

Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.