US start-up The Messenger has shut down less than a year after launching. All articles were removed on Wednesday, January 31, and an insider told New York Post that “thesite will go dark.” About 300 staffers who were working will not get severance, the source said. The site now has a blank page with ‘info@themessenger.com’ written.
Co-founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein had raised $50 million to launch the site in May last year. However, this week, Finkelstein had been struggling to secure funding.
In fact, the site's journalists recently questioned a directive from editors to remove articles on Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York, owing to Finkelstein’s close relationship with the former president, Semafor reported.
“This will go down as one of the biggest busts of all time,” a media expert said. “The Messenger will be remembered as the Titanic of publishing disasters.”
Finkelstein aspired to see The Messenger compete with the likes of The Los Angeles Times. He is also believed to have paid huge sums to hire journalists from other publications.
“What ultimately killed The Messenger was lack of message — and arrogance,” the industry source said. “Hundreds of people left great jobs with the promise of creating something better — which turned out to be a big lie.”
Another insider said, “It’s shocking how bad Jimmy handled this.”
{{/usCountry}}Another insider said, “It’s shocking how bad Jimmy handled this.”
{{/usCountry}}Jordan Hoffman, who was a film critic at The Messenger, wrote on X, “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!!!”
In another post, he wrote, “All I know is that if I were to launch a media start-up I'd be sure to rent an entire floor of a downtown Manhattan skyscraper that was 9/10ths empty all day ... and then fail to tell my employees they were laid off until they read about it in the New York Times.”
Messenger shut down after a series of media layoffs in recent times, including atThe Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Time, Sports Illustrated, Tech Crunch, NBC News and Business Insider.