The news site The Messenger, a money-driven upstart that launched to much fanfare last May, has shut down less than a year later, amid what industry insiders are calling the “Titanic of publishing disasters.” It was decided that
The article was published on the site on Wednesday night, but magazine officials said it would cease operations on Thursday.
“The site will go black,” a publisher official told the Post, adding that none of its roughly 300 staff members would receive severance pay.
A representative for Messenger had no comment.
Co-founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein, who launched the site in May after raising $50 million, said this week as employees brace for whether the company can avoid disaster. The Post previously reported that they were scrambling to secure funding.
“This will be remembered as one of the biggest busts in history,” said a media expert. “The Messenger will be remembered as the Titanic of publishing disasters.”
Mr. Finkelstein had big dreams of building the Messenger into a major centrist news organization, employing about 550 journalists within a year and competing with the likes of the Los Angeles Times.
He paid large sums of money to poach talent from major publications including the Post, Politico and NBC News, paying the site’s editor, Dan Wakeford, about $900,000, the people said.
“What ultimately killed Messenger was the lack of messaging and arrogance,” said an industry insider. “Hundreds of people have left great jobs promising to do something better, only to find out it was a big lie.”
Another source added, “It’s shocking how badly Jimmy has responded.”
In recent days, Mr. Finkelstein has been trying to finalize a financing deal and told the Post on Tuesday that his staff would learn their fate within the next 48 hours.
Earlier this month, a group of conservative media and business executives led by Omeed Malik, an investor who backed Tucker Carlson’s new media venture, offered $30 million for a 51% stake in the news site, valuing it. It was reported that the price was estimated at $60 million.
Media critics balked at the inflated valuation, given the site’s poor financials and sluggish traffic.
In recent months, the site’s journalists have been outraged by Finkelstein’s close relationship with Donald Trump, prompting editors to remove articles about the former president’s civil fraud trial in New York to avoid overwhelming the homepage. had doubts. Semaphore reported.
To make matters worse, Mr. Wakeford, the former editor-in-chief of People magazine, was reportedly MIA on multiple occasions, leaving larger editorial decisions to Mr. Finkelstein.
Employees also complained about requests to aggregate clickbait news articles to drive traffic to generate advertising dollars.
The implosion comes after Finkelstein and site president Richard Beckman gathered at the New York Times in March last year. Messenger has over 100 million monthly readers and is expected to bring in $100 million in revenue by 2024.
The site attracted just 12.5 million unique visitors in November, sources said, and Mr. Beckman, an executive known for aggressively accumulating advertising revenue, said the site was running out of money. He reportedly warned his employees.
The company got off to a rocky start, rapidly burning through cash and spending about $39 million on hiring. CNBC reported.
The company ended 2023 with a net loss of $43 million and laid off 20 employees in early January to cut costs.
Still, even as the endgame neared, Finkelstein denied reports that he was considering shutting down due to a lack of funding.
Meanwhile, Mr. Beckman resigned in October, and sources told the newspaper that he and Mr. Finkelstein “did not see eye to eye” on the direction of the business.
The executive wrote in his resignation memo on LinkedIn that he would be stepping down due to “short-term” health issues on January 31st — ironically, the day the site was finally shut down.
Before its release, media critics criticized the Beckman-Finkelstein duo as “ghosts from the past” with “delusional” ambitions in an increasingly demanding business.
The pair were partners in various media ventures, including the now-defunct Prometheus Global Media and Finkelstein’s publication The Hill, which he sold in 2021, but none were as ambitious as The Messenger. It wasn’t on point.
Mr. Beckman, a Condé Nast veteran known for selling magazine ads for the company’s publications, was poached to make the big deal, but critics say he is struggling to thrive in a fast-paced digital media environment. He emphasized how difficult it is.
To that end, Finkelstein also hired digital traffic guru Nietzhan Zimmerman, who worked at Gawker Media before working on The Hill. But again, sources say Mr. Zimmerman was using an old digital media strategy.
