MS Now takes on Trump’s Washington, not MSNBC

Ali Vitali isn’t naturally a morning person, but fortified by an early bedtime and stockpiled cans of sparkling orange-flavored Celsius energy drinks, she makes her gig work. “I’m contractually a morning person,” she said just after her show, aptly titled “Way Too Early,” wrapped one morning this month at 6 a.m.

Vitali, 35, is the first daily face of the new version of MSNBC, which—as of Saturday—has a different name and a different logo. Nothing will change about his show, his bedtime schedule, or his extensive purview as the network's permanent congressional whisperer. But viewers will now find him on a network with a logo that doesn't have a peacock and a new name: MSNBC Now.

NBC owner Comcast late last year began splitting its cable news networks MSNBC and CNBC, as well as other entertainment and sports brands like Golf Channel and USA Network, into a new company called Versant. While CNBC is retaining its name, MSNBC is adopting a new name—an acronym for "My Source for News, Views, and the World."

To thrive without NBC's deep staff and financial support, MSNBC Now intends to continue providing liberal opinion and news analysis in prime time to its Donald Trump-weary, Rachel Maddow-obsessed audience. But without the support of the 99-year-old network with which it has always shared a common name, it will have to figure out how to gather and report the news that powers its shows, website, podcasts, and social media.

To replace NBC News reporters and hosts, MSN Now is building its own newsroom. The network says this is a rare move in a news ecosystem grappling with frequent layoffs and dwindling resources.a

The network hired Scott Matthews from New York’s WABC as senior vice president of newsgathering and tapped Politico Senior Managing Editor Sudeep Reddy as its Washington bureau chief. After Reddy joined in June, he was flooded with emails from journalists looking for work or excited about building something new. “There were days where, between every meeting, I would get another handful of emails from people inquiring,” he said. “I have 300 backlogged messages of people I still want to meet with.”