COME SEE WHAT EZRA KLEIN'S TWITTER IS CALLING "REALLY WORTH READING"
A small irony at the network concerns the ambitious “I Am CNBC” promotional campaign that has been airing during commercial breaks all winter, for which each of the network’s thirty New York-based personalities filmed a thirty-second, black-and-white spot delivering a brief autobiographical monologue ending in “I am [name]. . . . I am CNBC.” We learn the sweet-faced Squawk Box anchor Becky Quick was an “oil field kid” and a proud Rutgers grad, commodities reporter Sharon Epperson bagged groceries, and Maria Bartiromo was a coat-check girl. We hear about all manner of awards and nominations, die-hard sports-franchise loyalties and harmless eccentricities, and, in the apotheosis of the form, we hear a slightly faster-paced extended riff from the man who is arguably CNBC’s most fearsome reporter:
I am a writer . . . son of an ironworker . . . son of New York . . . Golden Globes prospect . . . a Pulitzer Prize nominee . . . I’m a clothes horse . . . Afraid of heights . . . in love with my wife. . . . I’m a fantastic cook and I can prove it. In college I was a great dishwasher. . . . My mom called me Chucky, but no one else better try it. . . . I brush my teeth at my desk. . . . And if I were to die in the job I would be very honored. I am Charles Gasparino. . . . I am CNBC.
Gasparino taped the spot, and submitted to another hour or so of extended self-revelation for the CNBC.com Web site, on September 15, the day Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, causing a run on a major money market fund that had invested in its bonds that cascaded through the financial system and threatened to tie up the majority of the world’s money supply if not for massive federal intervention. Erin Burnett, the luminous mid-morning anchor who has been perhaps the network’s most visible public face during the crisis, taped her spot that day too. All thirty spots were taped between the fifteenth and the eighteenth of September, arguably the most turbulent four days in the history of finance, and thus one of the stranger allocations of newsroom resources in recent media history.
