To MSNBC president Phil Griffin, news is war. And not one of those fancy modern wars fought by drones and computer hackers, either. “We are in a knife fight for every viewer,” he says often, and: “We are on the battleground.” So, this winter, as Blizzard Nemo was bearing down on New York City, Griffin bunkered his top executives at the downtown Ritz Carlton for the cable news version of a military training exercise. A Navy SEAL spoke to them about how to manage fear during combat. They toured the September 11 museum, where they discussed the pressures of public scrutiny with the museum’s president. And, later, they participated in drills designed to sharpen their competitive instincts, including one where teams of two each created a specialty cocktail they felt “embodied MSNBC.”

Bill Wolff, Rachel Maddow’s executive producer, joked that the last event combined two things that Griffin loves most: “talking about MSNBC and having a cocktail.” One pair chose a Michelada (beer, lime juice, hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce) and explained that the drink conveyed MSNBC’s spice and unpredictability. Another chose a champagne cocktail (sugar cube soaked in angostura bitters, an ounce of cognac, champagne, and a twist of lemon), describing it, and the second-place cable news network, as classic, original, and unafraid to tell the “bitter” truth. A third mixed Gosling rum, Mezcal, and chocolate bitters and dubbed it “The Heart and the Fist,” which was the theme of the day’s activities and also the title of the SEAL’s memoir. In its cocktail incarnation, it was intended to convey MSNBC’s strength and compassion.

Griffin, a vodka drinker, picked a Guinness. It was an “acquired taste,” he explained. But those who drink it, drink a lot.

In its early years, MSNBC was more like a warm O’Doul’s: flat, bland, and buzz-free. Microsoft and NBC came together to launch the network on July 15, 1996, three months before Roger Ailes christened the Fox News Channel, and neither company had a clear vision of what MSNBC should be. “Our mandate was, ‘Go be CNN, but do it better,’ ” Griffin remembers.

In the network’s first year, about 24,000 viewers tuned in to prime time every night (compared with CNN’s 600,000). By its fifth anniversary, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a reporter that the whole enterprise, which cost $420 million to get off the ground, had been a mistake: “If we were starting it now,” he said, “I don’t think we would have started it.”