MSNBC announced Monday that it has hired David Rohde — one of NBC News president of editorial Rebecca Blumenstein’s first hires after she joined the network in early 2023 — as its senior national security reporter.
Rohde, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, previously served as NBC News’ senior executive editor of national security and law, a role he took over in April 2023. He is the latest in a series of reporters and editors who have left the Peacock network’s news arm for MSNBC as the latter’s new parent company, Versant, splits from NBCUniversal. MSNBC will adopt its new name, MS NOW, later this year.
Other hires from NBC News include Jacob Soboroff as a senior national and political correspondent; Brandy Zadrozny as a senior enterprise reporter; and Ken Dilanian as a justice reporter, among others. It has also continued to lure in reporters from other outlets.
Many have stayed with NBC News, however, and it hired election guru Steve Kornacki from MSNBC and gave him duties across NBC News and NBC Sports.
Rohde is a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, and his coverage has encompassed various conflicts in the Middle East. He also served as an executive editor and writer at the New Yorker, a national security editor and foreign affairs columnist for Reuters and a foreign correspondent for the New York Times.
He was also among a group of people kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2008, prompting a media blackout on the kidnapping as a method to ensure he survived. Rohde and his colleagues escaped between June and July of 2009.
NBC News has since named Carol E. Lee, an investigative reporter who served as its Washington managing editor, its managing editor for national security. She will oversee its coverage of the Department of Homeland Security, Pentagon, State Department, Department of Justice and the FBI, navigating both national security and foreign policy.
The network also named Colleen Long its editorial director for national security.
