NewsNation’s Moment

As Nexstar, its corporate parent, pursues a merger with Tegna, NewsNation goes after the Nancy Guthrie story.

On a recent weekday afternoon at NewsNation’s Midtown Manhattan offices, Connell McShane, the host of NewsNation Live—slim, neat, one quizzically upraised eyebrow—was covering a story dominating the media in general and NewsNation specifically: the disappearance of Today host Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy Guthrie. McShane turned to Brian Entin, NewsNation’s senior national correspondent, who was stationed outside Guthrie’s home near Tucson, analyzing the latest dramatic messages from local law enforcement: “It’s possible that they believe Nancy is no longer with us.”

On a highly competitive national story, Entin has ground out scoop after scoop. He’s spent hours standing around a Guthrie family member’s house in pitch darkness in order to share the most minute of details on the officers investigating the disappearance. (“Flashes still going off.… Definitely taking photos.”) He’s landed a dramatic interview with the mother-in-law of a person of interest the police briefly detained. Just before I visited NewsNation, Entin had broken news: he found a trail of blood outside Nancy’s house. NewsNation kept panning back to images of the splatter.