‘NBC Nightly News' EP Meghan Rafferty Exits to Join Versant
Rafferty will become vp of news standards for Versant, a job tasked with setting and maintaining the company's journalistic standards at both MSNBC and CNBC, and guiding both newsrooms. Rafferty's hire was announced internally by Brian Carovillano, who leads standards and editorial partnerships for the company.
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'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 wrote in a memo. 'She'll collaborate with colleagues across our news platforms, as well as legal and other departments, and she will report to me.'
Rafferty has led Nightly News since 2021, working with both Lester Holt and Tom Llamas. The broadcast is expected to name a new ep in the coming weeks, with Rafferty moving to Versant in September. Before joining NBC News Rafferty spent a decade at CNN, producing interviews and stories for journalists like Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour.
Versant has been staffing up ahead of the looming split, which will see MSNBC and CNBC severed from NBC News. In connection with the change, MSNBC has had to build an entire news organization from scratch (with a heavy emphasis on political news), and hiring executives that will be tasked with developing the company's digital strategy.
You can read Carovillano's memo, below.
Team,
I'm thrilled to share some exciting news as we continue to build out our leadership team supporting the growing newsrooms across both MSNBC and CNBC.
Meghan Rafferty is joining VERSANT as Vice President of News Standards, beginning in early September. In this role, Meghan will be a key voice within both networks' news leadership, helping to set and maintain the highest standards for our journalism.
She will help lead our News Standards Team and guide newsrooms at MSNBC and CNBC to ensure the work is fair, accurate and transparent. She'll collaborate with colleagues across our news platforms, as well as legal and other departments, and she will report to me.
No stranger to many of us here, Meghan joins us from NBC News, where she has been the executive producer of NBC Nightly News, anchored by Tom Llamas and Lester Holt, a position she has held since September 2021.
Under her leadership, NBC Nightly News was recognized with a News and Documentary Emmy for Holt's exclusive interview with President Biden, just days before he ended his reelection bid. Driving Nightly's in-depth investigative and foreign reports, Meghan was among those honored with a 2025 George Polk award for the investigative series 'Dealing the Dead' and a Murrow Award for Best Newscast in 2022. She joined NBC Nightly News as a senior producer in 2017.
Prior to joining NBC News, Meghan was with CNN for 10 years where she produced Wolf Blitzer's newsmaking interviews with presidents and world leaders. In 2009, she launched Christiane Amanpour's program, working as the lead editorial producer, and she was later nominated for an Emmy for producing Amanpour's interview with Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. Meghan received a News and Documentary Emmy award for her role in CNN's 2012 election coverage and a Peabody for her work in the field during the 2011 Gulf Oil Spill.
Please join me in welcoming Meghan to VERSANT and the news standards team.
Brian Carovillano
SVP of Standards & Editorial Partnerships for News
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