The Messenger, an bold on-line information web site that billed itself as a nonpartisan digital outlet and spent some $50 million ratcheting up its enterprise effort, abruptly shut down Wednesday after solely eight months in operation.
Founder Jimmy Finkelstein despatched an electronic mail to shocked staff asserting the speedy shutdown, with some 300 journalists and different staff being let go, in line with the The New York Times, which first reported the information.
In his electronic mail, Finkelstein stated he hadn’t shared the information with staff earlier as a result of he had been attempting desperately to lift sufficient funds to develop into worthwhile “literally until earlier today.”
“We exhausted every option available,” Finkelstein wrote, saying he was “personally devastated.”
The Messenger website carried solely its identify and an electronic mail handle Wednesday night time.
Finkelstein famous in his electronic mail that “economic headwinds have left many media companies fighting for survival.”
Certainly, The Messenger’s collapse follows large-scale layoffs by once-powerful and influential shops, together with the Los Angeles Instances, which cut its newsroom staff by 20% final week, in addition to Sports activities Illustrated and Enterprise Insider. Deliberate cuts even have sparked walkouts by staff at different venues, together with the New York Day by day Information and Forbes journal.
The Messenger was launched final Could and spent closely — some would say excessively, given the present media local weather — in hopes of turning into a media heavyweight.
The corporate employed skilled journalists from main organizations, together with The Related Press, entered into multimillion-dollar workplace leases in New York, Washington D.C. and Florida, and ambitiously aimed to attract sufficient internet site visitors to achieve a month-to-month viewers of 100 million readers.
At its finest, the outlet garnered solely 1 / 4 of that determine. It by no means turned a revenue, and it burned by way of its money as its advert revenues slumped.
Critics stated Finkelstein was counting on an outdated enterprise mannequin that relied on social media distribution and searches to draw eyeballs.
BuzzFeed Information, a Pulitzer Prize-winning on-line information outlet, was a earlier sufferer. CEO Jonah Peretti introduced final April that the outlet was shutting down after failing to show a revenue, saying that he’d been gradual to just accept that “the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.”
