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 is the most substantial blow in recent months to the news industry, which is reeling from an unrelenting series of cutbacks.
The organization hired about 300 people, including journalists with experience at such publications as Politico, Reuters, NBC News and The Associated Press, who joined the company in the hopes that it would deliver on its promise to introduce an important new nonpartisan voice to the American news landscape.
Mr. Finkelstein spoke grandly of its editorial ambitions, telling The New York Times in March that he wanted the website to recall great journalism institutions like “60 Minutes” and Vanity Fair. He critiqued the coverage on channels like CNN and Fox News, noting what he said were inconsistencies in coverage of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. capitol and the southern border.
Mr. Finkelstein and The Messenger’s president, Richard Beckman, a magazine veteran, planned to hire 550 journalists within a year, which would have put the website in a weight class with publications like The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Beckman predicted that The Messenger would generate $50 million this year. During a demo last year for The New York Times, Mr. Beckman said he wanted The Messenger to make readers “fall in love” with media again, illustrating the point with a sizzle reel scored by the Dire Straits hit “Money for Nothing.”
