Jacob Soboroff Aims to ‘Connect’ New MS NOW Weekend Show With Social-Media Energy

Jacob Soboroff says he was doing creator media before creator media became cool.

In some views, the 43-year-old MS NOW correspondent has finally made it. After years of doing what can sometimes be intense in-the-field coverage of the treatment of people crossing the southern U.S. border or the wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles region, the journalist will anchor his own three-hour program, “Connect,” starting this weekend between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

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Yet Soboroff has been narrating his journey, story by story, via a host of platforms for years, some of them decidedly non-traditional. And MS NOW is likely counting on that experience to help court viewers to his new program. In years past, Soboroff worked on a show called “YouTube Nation,” and logged time as a contributor to MTV News and HuffPost Live. He got his start doing videos he hoped would go viral, in an era when a lot of people thought that phrase meant someone was feeling under the weather.

“I think that that spirit is ingrained within me. I was born from that culture,” Soboroff says of the dozens of video podcasts and newsletters that are being launched these days. In a different time, Soboroff took note of how a young Anderson Cooper got experience at a start-up called Channel One, then made his way to ABC and CNN. “That was sort of a model for me,” says Soboroff during a recent interview. “It just showed me that by doing things on your own somebody might see it — and that’s exactly what happened to me.”

If he follows what has been a traditional career path at MS NOW, more may transpire. Working weekends on MS NOW — once known as MSNBC — has offered a path to prominent weekday gigs. Chris Hayes and Joy Reid first came to wider TV notice working weekend shifts, and now, as part of an overhaul of MS NOW’s schedule, so too will longtime Saturday and Sunday host Ali Velshi, who is taking over as anchor of “The 11^th Hour.”

Soboroff is focusing mostly on getting his show launched, not where he may be able to go in years to come. “I’m one day at a time on the weekends,” he says. “As a person who loves a vibe on a weekend, I think the weekends are going to be great. And if I’m always on the weekend, forever and forever, it’s a win.”

He will have a chance to make the program his own. “Connect” is the first show in the network’s history to originate from California. For Soboroff, it’s a chance to show the crowd his knowledge of his home stomping grounds, but it’s also an opportunity for MS NOW to focus on a state that plays an increasingly large role in national affairs. Indeed, both Fox News Channel and CNN have California-based programs. “Fox News @ Night,” an anchored by Trace Gallagher, gives Fox News the chance to offer west coast audiences a bespoke program at the end of its scheduled day. CNN’s “The Story Is…” with Elex Michaelson lets the Warner Bros. Discovery outlet offer news well into the wee hours of the morning with an anchor hosting a show in California primetime.

“This place is as much a part of me as anything else, “ says Soboroff, noting that covering west coast stories has played a role “in terms of my growth as a journalist as well as, I think, how people identify with me.” And while he will cover national and international stories, he is certainly aware of his surroundings. “This job has sent me all over planet Earth,” he says, “but I always end up back in Los Angeles.”

Making the program Soboroff’s own means harnessing some of the kinetic energy that is typically on display when he covers a story. Soboroff’s work often leaps off the traditional screen, making its way to social media, where he gives viewers more details than he can cram into a traditional segment.

He will get out from behind a desk. “I do hope to be out of the studio at least once a week in some capacity,” he says, adding “I am most comfortable with a stick microphone in my hand, handing it over to someone else so that they can tell their story about something.”

MS NOW will use “Connect” to spotlight its partnership with The Marshall Project, and a collaboration between the two that examined how the number of babies and toddlers held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody grew under President Trump’s second term, will appear on his program. Soboroff spoke with families whose children were detained as well as experts in child welfare, health, and immigration detention.

The journalist is also eager to fill his three hours with other kinds of reports. “We will be able to talk culture,” he says, and examine documentaries.

Soboroff didn’t start out looking to be a reporter. Indeed, some of his earliest jobs had him working on advance teams for politicians like Michael Bloomberg and Howard Dean. When he attended New York University, Soboroff spent a lot time pursuing a theater major.

But he couldn’t take his eye of what was happening on YouTube. He became fascinated by the medium’s potential after Senator George Allen found his campaign derailed in 2006 after he called a student volunteer of Indian descent “macaca.” “It became the moment of politics being born on YouTube,” Soboroff recalls. And he started doing video interviews of his own, hooking up with an organization called Why Tuesday that sought to move U.S. elections to weekends so more people could vote with greater ease. “The videos went viral,” he remembers. “It was my first time on MSNBC. It was my first time on cable news. I got interviewed all over the place,” and people noticed him.

“Connect” will keep digital viewing in mind. “For me, it is very critically important that everything we do be as digital forward as possible, while we make this broadcast linear television program,” Soboroff notes. “And that’s not a revolutionary thing to say. But I understand it and it’s how I operate on a daily basis.  I’m sitting here working my own social channels.”

Even the show’s theme music is personal for Soboroff. Sean Douglas, a songwriter who has worked on tunes for Lizzo, Demi Lovato and others, is an old friend. He and Soboroff have known each other since they were six years old. Douglas has helped craft “a sonic identity for the show, just like when you are watching a nightly news broadcast of anything else like that,” says Soboroff. “You will know you are watching ‘Connect.’”

Soboroff is eager to get started — and to spend some time in this latest phase of his career. “I’ve never been a believer in taking the express train, in the professional sense.”