Fox Business' Gasparino got his start in Tampa

Charlie Gasparino remembers his last day with The Tampa Tribune.

He says an editor took him and fellow newspaper scribes to a Tampa pub and toasted his decision to leave, noting that "Charlie, you are making the worst mistake of your life."

"It made me think for a minute because I had learned so much in my short time there, so it was a tough decision because I was doing pretty well," he said in a recent telephone interview.

It was 20 years ago that Gasparino, now 47, worked for the Tribune.

He went on to write for Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team that was nominated for a Pulitzer. He became a reporter and commentator for CNBC and now is the newest star at the Fox Business Network.

He is arguably the most tenacious financial reporter covering Wall Street today.

When Fox Business Network hired him away from CNBC two months ago, he told them the same thing he told the editors who hired him at the Tribune: "My job is to rip the lungs out of the competition."

"This is a competitive business and breaking news is what I thrive on," says Gasparino, who delights in scooping rivals and even co-workers.

Since joining Fox Business, he has broken several big stories that have embarrassed Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were privately courting favor on Wall Street.

He debuted on the network in February with a breaking story - business sources tipped him that Tiger Woods was going to make his first public apology.

"I am paid to produce and I work hard at it," he says. "I care about issues that affect the pocketbook."

He says the late Doyle Harvill, a former Tribune editor and publisher, told him that breaking news is the backbone of journalism.

"He told me that people are busy with their lives, working and raising kids, and they don't have time to work their way through 15 paragraphs of a think-piece," Gasparino says. "They want news, so don't bury the lead 15 graphs into the story."

Part of what distinguishes Gasparino from other TV pundits is his Bronx accent. Born to an Italian-American family, he sounds tough and streetwise.

Gasparino earned a bachelor's degree from Pace University and a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri - Columbia.

He only worked in Tampa for about a year in 1990. "I was interested in business reporting and Tampa had an opening," he says. "I had been turned down by the Dallas Morning News because I didn't have the right pedigree - a Harvard degree."

He says the Tampa offer was appealing because his mother had moved to Clearwater and she wasn't in good health. "I thought it would be good to be close to her," he says.

She died within a year, and he left to write for The Wall Street Journal, where he started breaking national news.

Among the stories that he broke was the Martha Stewart stock manipulation case in 2002. It eventually resulted in Stewart being fined and serving a few months in jail.

He also uncovered the questionable dealings of former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was President George W. Bush's nominee for Homeland Security chief. Kerik had to withdraw the nomination and was later convicted on eight felony charges.

He says that during his nine-year stint with the Wall Street Journal he started making guest appearances on CNBC, where he caught the attention of viewers.

"Interestingly, the Martha Stewart scandal was not front-page news at The Journal when it started, but it was at CNBC so I was getting interviewed a lot," he says. "I was horrible at first but I got better."

He says he realized that the future of journalism was a multimedia presence. He still writes for blogs such as The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post.

During the financial crisis in 2008-09, Gasparino was at the forefront of CNBC's coverage

Now he wants to be at the forefront of Fox Business Network's coverage. The network is still trying to establish itself and Gasparino likes the challenge.

He admits that he is a workaholic. "I'm doing Fox Business and appearing on Fox News Channel, writing blogs and articles and working on a second book.'

His first book, "The Sellout," details what caused the financial collapse. His second book, "Bought And Paid For," is about the cozy alliance between government and Wall Street.