| NBCNews.com, formerly known as msnbc.com, is the internet arm of NBC News and is owned and controlled by NBCUniversal. It includes content from NBC programmes including Today, NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and Dateline NBC, the MSNBC cable channel, and partners like The New York Times, in addition to original and wire reporting.
The site was launched in 1996 as a 50/50 joint venture between NBCUniversal and Microsoft, coinciding with the formation of a separate joint venture for the cable news network MSNBC. Despite the fact that they had the same name, msnbc.com and MSNBC had independent corporate structures and news operations, with msnbc.com based on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, and MSNBC based at NBC headquarters in New York. In 2005, Microsoft sold its investment in the MSNBC channel, and in July 2012, it sold its share in msnbc.com.
In October 2012, Gregory Gittrich, the former editor-in-chief of NBC Local Integrated Media and, before that, the assistant managing editor of the New York Daily News, was named vice president and executive editor of msnbc.com, and the news staff was reduced, with a focus on original journalism online. Vivian Schiller, the former chief executive officer of National Public Radio, was his boss. Both Gittrich and Schiller had moved on to Vocativ by 2014, when the msnbc.com personnel had been drastically cut.
The site was launched in 1996 as msnbc.com, along with the MSNBC cable news channel, both of which were initially joint ventures with the software corporation Microsoft—the MSNBC channel was situated in New Jersey, while msnbc.com was based in Redmond, Washington. Despite the fact that NBC purchased Microsoft's investment in MSNBC in 2005, msnbc.com remained a joint venture between the two corporations, and the two outlets remained relatively independent. Msnbc.com also purchased a number of other news websites, including Newsvine, a community-driven news site, in October 2007 and EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news site, in August 2009.
Despite sharing the same moniker as the MSNBC channel, the two stations' content have begun to diverge. While msnbc.com remained a typical, impartial news source, the MSNBC channel's programming has shifted to a more liberal tone. The disparities alarmed NBC's personnel, who believed that some users might have assumed that the msnbc.com site was also a liberal news organization like the channel. Plans were drawn up to rename its traditional news website, such as NBCNews.com, and to repurpose msnbc.com as a website for the MSNBC channel itself.
On July 14, 2012, NBC announced that Microsoft had sold its half-share of msnbc.com back to the company for $300 million. NBC also announced the immediate renaming of msnbc.com to NBCNews.com on the same day, as well as the anticipated debut of a new MSNBC website in 2013 that would focus on its programs and characters. Despite the fact that MSNBC and Microsoft are no longer affiliated, the site will continue to be a part of Microsoft's MSN.com gateway and receive visitors from it.
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