Another News Site Goes Bust

Add another media casualty to the new year: The digital news site the Messenger abruptly went belly-up on Wednesday, after less than a year in business, reports the New York Times. The site founded by Jimmy Finkelstein, who previously owned the Hill and The Hollywood Reporter, launched in May with a pledge of unbiased news coverage, per NBC News. The site hired 300 journalists out of the gate and aimed to have more than 500, which would have put it on par with any major news organization in the US. Instead, it has become "one of the stranger and more expensive recent experiments in digital media," per the Washington Post. The Times similarly calls it "one of the biggest busts in the annals of online news."

• Factors: Finkelstein blamed "economic headwinds" for the collapse, though the Post cites his "confidence in a traffic-based model that rivals had dismissed as outdated." Finkelstein also splurged on swanky office leases in New York, DC, and West Palm Beach, Florida.
• No warning: Staffers were reportedly caught off guard, with most learning of the closure in media reports. One, Jordan Hoffman, tweeted that the last thing he saw on the company's Slack was a "panicked colleague" wondering about health insurance just as everyone was kicked out of the message system. Another, Jim LaPorta, tweeted that workers would receive no severance or health insurance.
• Context: The closure comes amid a spate of similar bad-news developments across the media landscape, including massive layoffs at Sports Illustrated and the Los Angeles Times. On Thursday, dozens of staffers from the Chicago Tribune started a 24-hour strike over languishing contract talks with hedge fund owner Alden Global Capital, per the AP.

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