Headline Roundup • January 31st, 2024
The Messenger Shutting Down Less Than One Year After Launching
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Digital media startup The Messenger (Center bias) is shutting down, per multiple reports.
Details: Co-founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein raised $50 million for the start-up, launching the site last May with a pledge to disrupt the news industry and provide nonpartisan national news coverage. The ambitious outlet reportedly spent heavily in the initial months of its existence. In recent months, reports emerged of dysfunction and disagreement within the ranks of the outlet. In early January, the outlet announced it was laying off roughly two dozen employees as a cost-cutting measure.
Key Quotes: In an email to the staff, Finkelstein said, “This is truly the last thing I wanted, and I am deeply sorry.” He went on to state, “Over the past few weeks, literally until earlier today, we exhausted every option available and have endeavored to raise sufficient capital to reach profitability … Unfortunately, we have been unable to do so.”
How the Media Covered It: Outlets linked the shutdown to a wider trend of layoffs and cuts throughout the media industry in recent weeks. The New York Times (Lean Left bias) stated that The Messenger attempted to succeed “with a playbook borrowed from the doomed publishing start-ups of yesteryear” and is “one of the biggest busts in the annals of online news.” The New York Post (Lean Right bias) labeled the outlet a “Money-bleeding start-up” and reported that “none of the roughly 300 staffers will get severance.”
Featured Coverage of this Story
Valerie Plesch for The New York Times
The Messenger, a news website that pledged to shake up the media industry with a playbook borrowed from the doomed publishing start-ups of yesteryear, will be closing down.
In an email to staff, the site’s founder, Jimmy Finkelstein, said that The Messenger’s shutdown was “effective immediately.”
“This is truly the last thing I wanted, and I am deeply sorry,” Mr. Finkelstein wrote.
By closing less than a year after it launched, The Messenger will now be one of the biggest busts in the annals of online news. And its collapse...
Getty Images
The Messenger, a digital media company that launched less than a year ago, will soon shut down, according to multiple reports.
News of the startup’s plans to shutter was first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the decision.
The Hill has reached out to a representative for the outlet.
Last spring, founder Jimmy Finkelstein, who previously owned The Hill, told the Times and other media outlets his vision for The Messenger was one that he described as a “Washington Post, Daily Mail hybrid.”
...
Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Money-bleeding start-up The Messenger — the news site that launched to great fanfare last May — was expected to shut down Wednesday in what sources called “the Titanic of publishing disasters.”
“The site will go dark,” an insider at the publication told The Post, adding that none of the roughly 300 staffers will get severance.
Co-founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein, who launched the site in May after raising $50 million, had been scrambling to secure funding this week as employees braced to hear whether the company would avert disaster, as...
