They are saying don’t shoot the messenger, however what if The Messenger shoots itself?
Media startup The Messenger burst on the scene final Might with $50 million {dollars} in hand, aggressively hiring journalists to construct an “unbiased” digital newsroom. As a substitute, its employees discovered by a New York Occasions article at the moment that the publication is shutting down. In response to workers’ social media posts, the laid off employees is not going to obtain any severance, and their healthcare protection will finish.
“The last thing I saw in The Messenger’s slack was a panicked colleague writing ‘wait, what about our insurance coverage, I have a surgery boo—’ and then we all got booted out!!!” stated journalist Jordan Hoffman in a put up on X.
The journalism trade hasn’t had an excellent yr, partially as a result of declining digital ad sales throughout the board. However The Messenger’s implosion is shockingly egregious, even in a time when 3,000 journalists have been laid off within the final yr.
Based by Jimmy Finkelstein (the previous proprietor of The Hollywood Reporter and The Hill), The Messenger had misplaced about $38 million of its startup capital and solely generated $3 million by late final yr, per the New York Times. At launch, Finkelstein claimed the corporate would develop to make $100 million in revenue after its first yr, but it surely solely lasted about 9 months.
The Messenger had been making an attempt to lift further capital within the hours main as much as its demise. Nevertheless it did not safe the funding it wanted, which raises the query of why the publication wanted to lift more cash so quickly, anyway.
“Over the last few weeks, literally until last night, we exhausted every option available and have endeavored to raise sufficient capital to reach profitability,” Finkelstein wrote. “Unfortunately, we have been unable to do so, which is why we haven’t shared the news with you until now. This is truly the last thing I wanted, and I am deeply sorry.”
Like just about each different firm that has performed layoffs in the previous few years, Finkelstein cited imprecise “economic headwinds” in his word to employees in regards to the closure (which, we can’t emphasize sufficient, got here after employees discovered that they misplaced their jobs from a New York Occasions article). Nonetheless, Finkelstein has not addressed simply the way it’s attainable to burn by a lot cash so rapidly.
From the get-go, media consultants have been skeptical of The Messenger’s sport plan, which was to leverage social media referral visitors to generate advert income. This technique for a media enterprise might need labored fifteen years in the past, however this isn’t the period of the BuzzFeed growth (simply take a look at that firm’s inventory worth). At launch, Nieman Lab famous that The Messenger was publishing a brand new story each two minutes, a few of which have been just one sentence lengthy. Although Finkelstein’s ambitions to construct a large-scale, unbiased media machine have been lofty, they have been in the end doomed to fail. Sadly, that failure means monetary uncertainty and precarious healthcare protection for its employees.
“I cannot fathom doing this to anyone,” wrote former Messenger staffer Madeline Fitzgerald on X. “I don’t [know] why you would treat employees like this.”
