Online news outlet The Messenger will cease operations after less than a year, Axios reported Wednesday.
Messenger started with $50 million in May, but hemorrhaged tens of millions of dollars and had revenue of only about $3 million in 2023, Axios said. reportsaid, citing financial records. The company originally expected revenue of $100 million in 2024. (Related: WaPo suffers financial losses after Trump leaves office)
I just got kicked out @TheMessenger I'm lazy along with many of my colleagues. I think these news articles I've been working on need to be scrapped.
— James LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) January 31, 2024
Messenger CEO and founder Jimmy Finkelstein launched the outlet in 2023 after selling The Hill for $130 million in 2021, according to Axios. The company hired 300 of his employees in a short period of time and offered them generous salaries.
“This is something we really didn't want to happen and we are very sorry,” Finkelstein wrote in an email to employees. according to In the New York Times.
Axios said the Messenger produced centrist news on a variety of topics and had a large audience, but could not afford a large newsroom. He spent millions of dollars on travel and entertainment without receiving sufficient advertising revenue, according to To semaphor.
“For the past few weeks, literally up until the beginning of today, we have exhausted every option available to us and strived to raise sufficient capital to achieve profitability,” Finkelstein wrote, according to the NYT. Ta. “Unfortunately, I couldn't do that.”
Finkelstein recently met with conservative media and business executives, including Omeed Malik, Garrett Bentley, Ryan Coyne and George Farmer, to invest in Axios' majority stake in Messenger at Mar-a-Lago. We talked about selling. report.
Many legacy media publications are responding to economic challenges affecting the news industry and resorting to drastic measures, Axios report on friday. More than a dozen people are laying off employees, dealing with employee strikes, or trying to sell.
For example, Arena Group recently laid off nearly the entire union staff at Sports Illustrated, and the Los Angeles Times said it would lay off more than 100 journalists as the paper lost up to $40 million a year. announced the reduction of newsroom staff by 20 people. %. BuzzFeed is in talks to release two of his brands: Complex and Tasty. according to To the Wall Street Journal.
The Messenger did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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