Money-bleeding start-up The Messenger — the news site that launched to great fanfare last May — shut down Wednesday, according to a source close to the situation.
“The site will go dark,” the insider at the publication told The Post, adding that none of the roughly 300 staffers will get severance.
Co-founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein had been scrambling to secure funding this week, as employees braced to hear whether the organization would avert disaster.
The Messenger, which launched with $50 million in May, had big dreams to become a major centrist news outlet that would include hiring around 550 journalists within a year and compete with the likes of The Los Angeles Times.
“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.”
“What ultimately killed The Messenger was lack of message — and arrogance,” the source added. “Hundreds of people left great jobs with the promise of creating something better–which turned out to be a big lie.”
Another insider merely added: “It’s shocking how bad Jimmy handled this.”
Finkelstein and the site’s president Richard Beckman crowed to The New York Times last March that the site would garner more than 100 million monthly readers and bring in $100 million in revenue in 2024.
But the company had a bumpy start, burning through cash at a fast clip and spending roughtly $39 million on hiring, CNBC reported.
Earlier this month, The Messenger shot down reports that it was considering shutting down over cash shortfalls, laid off two-dozen employees to stem costs, as it ended 2023 with a net loss of $43 million.
Sources told The Post that the site lured in just 12.5 million unique visitors in November as Beckman — an exec known for aggressively drumming up advertising revenue, sounded the alarm bells to employees that the site was running out of money.
Earlier this month, Beckman stepped down, with sources telling The Post he did “not see eye to eye” with Finkelstein on the direction of the business.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
