Deadline: Vaughn Hillyard To Join MSNBC As Network Taps Additional Correspondents In Advance Of Split From Comcast

Story from Deadline:

Vaughn Hillyard will join MSNBC as senior White House correspondent, as the network has hired a group of journalists for its team in advance of its split from Comcast and sister network NBC News.

Hillyard has been an NBC News White House correspondent but has contributed to MSNBC.

Also joining MSNBC will be Laura Barrón-López as White House correspondent, David Noriega as MSNBC correspondent, and Marc Santia as an investigative correspondent.

The split, expected to be completed later this year, has left questions of who will go where. Figures like Andrea Mitchell, Steve Kornacki and José Díaz-Balart are staying with NBC News, while figures like Ken Dilanian and Antonia Hylton are landing at MSNBC.

MSNBC will be part of Versant, the newly branded entity of cable networks and other media properties formerly owned by Comcast. With NBC News no longer a sister network, MSNBC is building up its own news division.

Hillyard has covered three presidential elections for the network, and landed interviews with figures like Steve Bannon, just before he served a four-month prison sentence. Hillyard also interviewed Vice President Mike Pence in 2018 following the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, among other high profile assignments.

Barrón-López was White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour and a CNN political analyst. She also covered the Biden administration for Politico, and was part of the PBS team that won a Peabody for coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

Noriega will be based in Los Angeles. He was a national correspondent for NBC News and reported across the country and international on issues including migration. He received an Edward R. Murrow Award for his reporting from Mexico.

Santia was a reporter on criminal justice, security issues and investigations for NBC4 in New York since 2012. He’s covered national stories, including mass shootings and natural disasters, and won a regional Murrow award for a story on a former United Airlines flight attendant who honored friends and coworkers lost in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

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