They say don't shoot the messenger, but what if the Messenger shoots himself?
Media startup The Messenger burst onto the scene last May with $50 million in hand, aggressively hiring journalists to build an “unbiased” digital newsroom. Instead, its staff found out today through a New York Times article that the publication is closing. According to the employees' social networks. publicationsDismissed workers will not receive any compensation and their health coverage will end.
“The last thing I saw on The Messenger's slack was a panicked colleague writing 'wait, what's going on with our insurance coverage?' I have ab—' surgery and then they kicked us all out!!!” said journalist Jordan Hoffman in a post on X.
The journalism industry hasn't had a great year, in part because decline in digital advertising sales in all fields. But The Messenger's implosion is surprisingly egregious, even at a time when 3,000 journalists have been laid off in the last year.
Founded by Jimmy Finkelstein (former owner of The Hollywood Reporter and The Hill), The Messenger had lost about $38 million of its initial capital and was only generating $3 million at the end of last year, due to The New York Times. At the launch, Finkelstein stated that the company would grow to manufacture 100 million dollars in revenue after his first year, but he only lasted about nine months.
The Messenger had been trying to raise additional capital in the hours before its disappearance. But it failed to secure the funding it needed, raising the question of why the publication needed to raise more money so soon.
“Over the past few weeks, literally until last night, we have exhausted all available options and have struggled to raise enough capital to achieve profitability,” Finkelstein wrote. “Unfortunately we have not been able to do so, so we have not shared the news with you until now. “This is truly the last thing I wanted and I am deeply sorry.”
Like almost every other company that has carried out layoffs in recent years, Finkelstein cited vague “economic headwinds” in his memo to staff about the closure (which, we cannot emphasize enough, occurred after The staff learned they had lost their jobs from a New York Times article.) Still, Finkelstein has not addressed how it is possible to spend so much money so quickly.
From the beginning, media pundits were skeptical of The Messenger's game plan, which was to leverage social media referral traffic to generate advertising revenue. This strategy for a media company might have worked fifteen years ago, but this is not the era of BuzzFeed's rise (just look at that company's stock price). At launch, Nieman Laboratory noted that The Messenger published a new story every two minutes, some of which were only one sentence long. Although Finkelstein's ambitions to build a large-scale, impartial media machine were lofty, they were ultimately doomed to failure. Unfortunately, that failure means financial uncertainty and precarious health coverage for his workers.
“I can't imagine doing this to anyone.” wrote Madeline Fitzgerald, former Messenger employee, in X. “I don't (know) why you would treat employees like that.”
