As MSNBC prepares to formally break away from its corporate sibling NBC, it’s leaving behind more than just the Art Deco hallways of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Although the 24-hour cable channel is best-known for opinionated stars like Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s midday hours and breaking news coverage have long relied on the journalistic muscle of NBC News, with its sprawling bureaus and amply-staffed Washington office.
That resource will be cut off later this year, when Comcast, MSNBC’s owner, spins it out along with a batch of other cable networks into a separate company, unaffiliated with the rest of the NBCUniversal family. The usual NBC correspondents who pop up on MSNBC’s air with updates on, say, the latest fight in Congress, will no longer be available.
One option would be to convert MSNBC’s lineup to progressive talk shows, but the channel’s president, Rebecca Kutler, is leaning in a different direction. On Thursday, Ms. Kutler was set to announce the channel’s first-ever Washington bureau chief: not a left-leaning partisan, but a down-the-middle print reporter with long stints at Politico and The Wall Street Journal.
Her choice, Sudeep Reddy, was most recently a senior managing editor at Politico, and his résumé is heavy with economics and Washington policy coverage.
“The MSNBC audience is cerebral and appreciates analytical, contextual reporting,” she said in an interview. “He is going to build and run a significant Washington reporting team, that to me matches with the moment — a serious moment — where real reporting will matter.”
