Katy Tur And Jacob Soboroff Bring Lifelong Friendship To ‘MSNBC Live 25’

MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff and Katy Tur covering the Pacific Palisades wildfires in their hometown of Los Angeles, California.

MSNBC

For MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff and Katy Tur, the upcoming MSNBC Live ‘25 event in New York isn’t just a chance to connect face-to-face with some of the network’s biggest fans, it’s a chance to kick back with each other–longtime colleagues but lifelong friends.

“Katie and I have been friends since we were teenagers,” Soboroff told me. “We grew up in Los Angeles together, and to be able to work together for the last 10 years has really been very, truly, honestly, a special experience.”

Soboroff, an MSNBC senior national and political correspondent, and Tur, host of Katy Tur Reports, will host a live conversation focused on immigration and identity, issues that they have covered deeply and that have become defining issues of the second Trump presidency.

‘We spend so much of our life on screens…they want to feel a human connection’

“What you’re going to get out of Jacob and I is likely a conversation that centers a lot around immigration,” Tur told me, “and what we’ve reported on and witnessed—not just from this administration, but the last one as well.”

MSNBC Live ’25 is the network’s second large-scale event, is designed to be more than a fan fest—it’s a space for dialogue, connection, and a key part of MSNBC’s growing events business, aimed at expanding beyond its roots in cable television and deepening engagement with its base of superfans.

“I think people want a connection,” Tur said. “We spend so much of our life on screens. They want to feel a human connection. Being in the room gives you a different perspective, a different vantage point.”

Soboroff noted that MSNBC has one of the most engaged audiences in television, and that base will be critical as the network disengages from NBC later this year and adopts a new name, MS NOW, or “My Source News Opinion World.” The rebrand comes as MSNBC’s new parent company, Versant, is building a global newsgathering operation separate from NBC News–and a business model less dependent on cable television in a rapidly splintering media ecosystem. MSNBC’s events business is a key part of what MS NOW will become, including a premium audio subscription business with 18 original podcasts, and a growing presence on YouTube and TikTok.

“It’s the most engaged audience I’ve ever been in front of professionally,” Soboroff said of MSNBC’s superfans. “This event is going to bring them into that energy themselves,” he said. “You become less of a passive viewer and more of an engaged and active participant.”

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“We’re not going to give you a Ron Burgundy version of Katie Tur or me,” Soboroff joked. “You’re going to get us—unfiltered and honest.”

It’s that kind of unfiltered honesty viewers have come to expect from both Soboroff and Tur, whose coverage of the Pacific Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles this year included her deeply personal reflections on seeing her childhood home “burned to the ground alongside the homes of almost every else I grew up with in Pacific Palisades.”

In January, Tur described covering the fires while also receiving constant notifications on her phone, each message reporting another part of her life erased by the flames. “My godforsaken phone…never stops buzzing,” Tur said. ‘This is bad’ the messages read. ‘Someone saw my street burning on ABC7,’ says another. ‘Our home is gone.’ ‘My parents’ home, too’.’ ‘There’s nothing left.’ ‘Your elementary school is gone.’ ‘So is your home.’ My home.”

‘I can tell you what I’ve seen, what I’ve touched and felt and smelled’

When Soboroff and Tur join MSNBC hosts like Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Jen Psaki at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, they aim to talk about immigration and identity the way they talk about it off camera. “The best conversations are the ones you have with your closest friends,” Tur said. “We’re incredibly lucky to bring that to MSNBC viewers—not just on television, but through this event in person.”

“You want to be able to have hard conversations,” Tur told me. “If you have one side being chilled or pressured or intimidated, I don’t think that’s good for anybody.”

Soboroff added that while they can’t predict the future any better than viewers can, they can share what they’ve learned on the ground reporting and talking to people personally impacted by Donald Trump’s policies. “We’re not oracles,” he said. “But I can tell you what I’ve seen, what I’ve touched and felt and smelled. That’s what I hope to share—not predictions, but facts on the ground.”

“If people are feeling despair or unsure of what’s ahead,” Soboroff told me, “no better way to mitigate those feelings than to be in a room with people and talk it out.”