MSNBC Makes Digital Team Hires, Promotion

Rashida Jones, MSNBC president, today announced staff additions and a promotion to its digital staff.

Clarissa Pharr is being promoted to senior opinion editor. She has spent the past 11 months building MSNBC’s columnist program. Together with Hayes Brown, Pharr has been recruiting and editing columnists for MSNBC Daily.

Working with Pharr, Jarvis DeBerry is joining MSNBC as an opinion editor. Together, they will continue to expand MSNBC’s perspective coverage. DeBerry, the former editor of the Louisiana Illuminator, spent 22 years at The Times-Picayune (and later NOLA.com). He was on the team of Times-Picayune journalists awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service after that team’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Zeeshan Aleem joins MSNBC as its second fulltime opinion columnist. His byline has appeared on a variety of topics from the fall of Afghanistan to Tucker Carlson’s Budapest tour. Together with Hayes Brown, Zeeshan will expand the editorial reach of the opinion section. A former reporter for Vice and Vox.com, Zeeshan has written extensively on public policy and its implications on American systems and society.

Hayley Miller joins MSNBC as its founding blog editor, where she will lead MSNBC’s efforts to expand MSNBC’s showblogs and also create a strategy for an MSNBC live blog. Miller most recently worked at HuffPost as a senior reporter on the breaking news team, focusing on politics, crime and entertainment, but spent the first half of her HuffPost career as a senior editor for the site’s contributors platform.

Ja’han Jones joins MSNBC as a new show blogger. He created the Black Obituary Project, illustrating the broad reach of police violence. Most recently, as a breaking news reporter for HuffPost, he created Black Hair Defined, a project celebrating the beauty of Black hair. Jones is a graduate of NBC’s Page Program.