Versant is starting to take shape. The new company, which will be the home to NBCUniversal’s cable channels like MSNBC, USA Network and E! later this year, has hired NBC Nightly News executive producer Meghan Rafferty to be its vice president of news standards.
Rafferty, who has been the EP for NBC’s linchpin news show since 2021, will start her new role in early September. Brian Carovillano, Versant’s SVP of standards and editorial partnerships for news, made the announcement in a memo to staff on Tuesday.
“She will help lead our News Standards Team and guide newsrooms at MSNBC and CNBC to ensure the work is fair, accurate and transparent,” he said.
Carovillano added that Rafferty will be focused on setting and maintaining the “highest standards for our journalism” and that she will report direct to him.
Rafferty has been at NBC Nightly News since 2017, when she started as a senior producer. During her time as the show’s top producer, she was honored with a Murrow Award in 2022 and a George Polk Award this year for the investigative series “Dealing the Dead,” which looked at how unclaimed bodies were being dissected for medical research without family consent.
Before joining NBC, Rafferty spent a decade at CNN, where she was a producer for both Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour.
Rafferty’s move to Versant comes after the Comcast spinoff company appointed a new leadership suite last month. Her hiring was also announced on the same day former NBC Cable president Tom Rogers joined Versant as a senior advisor.
