CNBC's Schacknow: Our Day On the Alerts Desk
By: From Here To There And Back Again: From time to time, we at the Breaking News Desk will be letting you in on some of our dirty little secrets. Remember, in the end, it’s all about how the sausage tastes, not how it was made!
Case in point: each Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. ET, the Energy Department releases its weekly inventory numbers for oil, gasoline, and distillates. These numbers are extremely important to the oil markets, and often affect trading in other financial markets as well.
Our NYMEX reporters bring you the numbers live as they hit, along with instant analysis. So, being at the NYMEX, the hub of oil trading, you’d assume that the reporter gets the numbers from the big screen, just like the traders, and proceeds with the analysis.
Well, that’s true. Now. As CNBC reporter Sharon Epperson did this morning when the numbers broke at 10:30 a.m. ET. But for a long time, it wasn’t.
After long and extensive negotiations, NYMEX finally agreed to let us put a reporter on the trading floor, where those numbers are clearly visible. But until now, the reporter had to do it from a booth high above the floor, where the numbers are not visible. So how were we able to report them on time?
Only through an angst-filled process involving someone at this end monitoring the Energy Department web site, telling the reporter (while she was already on air) what the numbers were, AND typing the dekos (the on-screen supers that many know as “chyrons”) at the same time. Messy, and not always effective. Thank goodness that’s over!
Hold The Onions: Green onions to be exact (also known as scallions to you Food Network fans). Taco Bell (owned by YUM! Brands ) has pulled green onions from all 58 hundred of its restaurants, suspecting that they may be the cause of the E. Coli breakout in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. "Squawk On The Street" viewers saw Mark Haines break the news at 9:52 a.m. ET.
