On Press Profiles, a Faber retrospective: 30 years of rockin’ the ‘Sqwak’ on CNBC

On the latest Press Profiles podcast, host Russell Sherman looks back at David Faber’s nearly 30 years on CNBC including the late ’90s — when CNBC and in particular “Squawk Box” broke out. Faber, an award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author, has become a fixture on the investment journalism scene. Says Faber:

We became extremely popular along with, obviously, what was the rise in popularity of investing and the great bubble and the excitement that was attached to the creation of the internet. I look back on it very fondly….. I think back to that as our moment of breaking out… Joe (Kernan) and I were on the cover of magazines. It’s so funny. We did a cross country trip on a bus where we did shows everywhere, and people would actually come out, want autographs. It was ridiculous. It was fun.”

Faber also discusses his stint as a “Jeopardy” guest host, his love of the New York Mets, his start covering banks for an Institutional Investor newsletter, and how the art of breaking stories has changed over the years.

For Faber, a good interview these days can often have a bigger impact than breaking the news about the latest M&A transaction. “In years past that when I broke stories, I’d own the story for days….. now, you own it for three minutes, and you’ve put in days, weeks sometimes, call after call, and then it’s yours for three minutes. The psychic reward is just not nearly as great……It doesn’t mean that I still don’t enjoy it when I get a hold of a story, or I still don’t get frustrated when I have something and I don’t get there, because I still do enjoy breaking a good story, but what I focus more on now is big interviews, and not just an interview with somebody who has a big name, but an interview at a moment that actually matters.”

You can listen to the 30-minute discussion with Faber on Apple, Spotify, or Google or visit the Press Profiles Podcast Website to listen to this or one of the many other interesting conversations in the series where Sherman speaks with top journalists. Be sure to give Faber a high five on his Twitter page.