Today’s TVNewser In-Profile has an NBC News flair: MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, NBC News Daily anchor Zinhle Essamuah and Today with Hoda & Jenna co-host Jenna Bush Hager.
The trio have been profiled within the past two weeks, with Hayes and Bush Hager speaking to People for separate stories, and Essamuah speaking to Teen Vogue.
Chris Hayes is taking his highly-popular podcast Why Is This Happening? on tour, taping in front of live audiences in New York, Philadelphia, Austin and Chicago this fall.
Why Is This Happening? premiered in May 2018 and recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. New episodes are released each Tuesday wherever pods can be found.
He spoke with People about Why Is This Happening? and his love for live events:
“We’ve absolutely loved doing live events over the years,” Hayes told PEOPLE. “I’m still a theatre kid at heart and there really is nothing like the energy in a room with hundreds of people who are excited to be there.”
NBC News Now Daily co-anchor Zinhle Essamuah received the Teen Vogue profile treatment recently. Essamuah, who, with Kate Snow, co-anchors the midday news for NBC stations and on the NBC News Now streaming service, told the millennial and Gen Z-focused lifestyle magazine what she hopes to bring to her new position at the anchor desk. Essamuah joined Snow on NBC News Daily desk back in July.
One of my goals for this role, making it accessible, speaking in a language that everyone, whether you have a college degree or you work every day somewhere else, everyone should be able to understand the news because at the end of the day, we’re not telling stories to sound smart. We’re telling stories to hopefully educate people and keep them safe and maybe teach them something they didn’t know before. Then I think just the other thing that has been big in all my reporting, because I started as a filmmaker and my thing has always been telling stories about underrepresented communities or underreported stories.
Among the subjects that were broached in her wide-ranging People profile, Bush Hager discussed her popular book club Read With Jenna, which started as a recurring segment on Today in 2019:
Read With Jenna has grown to become one of the biggest influences in the publishing industry. Of the 55 books Bush Hager has featured, 39 have become New York Times bestsellers, and 30 have been optioned for TV or film.
Building on the success of the book club, Bush Hager launched a production company, Thousand Voices, last year. Though on hold because of the writers’ and actors’ strikes, it’s already optioned 11 works for adaptation. “I have a lot of jobs,” she says. “But everywhere I am, I’m 100 percent present.”