The reckoning for the fake media has finally arrived and today’s story surrounds The Messenger, an online establishment outlet that launched a mere eight months ago and is already fighting for its survival.
“Embattled news startup The Messenger is fighting for its life as co-founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein scrambles to secure funding this week to keep it afloat,” reports the New York Post.
“Bracing for the worst, employees are expected to learn their fate in the next 48 hours, according to insiders with knowledge.”
“Hopes are not high in the newsroom,” one source told the Post. “It’s f-ing bananas.”
To great fanfare and promise, The Messenger launched in May 2023 with $50 million in startup funds and the promise to “hire around 550 journalists and generat[e] over $100 million in revenue in 2024.”
Earlier this month, the far-left Washington Post (which itself lost $100 million last year) reported that The Messenger laid off 20 staffers, which represented seven percent of its staff, which means The Messenger never came close to hiring those 550 journalists. At the beginning of January, the far-left New York Times reported that the outlet was down to $1.8 million in cash reserves and only earned $3 million in 2023.
CNBC reports that The Messenger “ended 2023 with a net loss of $43 million [and is] planning to eliminate 40 positions and furlough 15 people for four months this year[.]”
In a statement to CNBC, a Messenger spokeman claimed, “[W]e generated 88 million page views in November, and Google Analytics shows that we generated 100 million page views in December. Our traffic is growing at 30% a month, already putting us ahead of many major news publications.”
But.
Sources told the New York Post, “The site lured in just 12.5 million unique visitors in November,” and that is nowhere near the “100 million monthly readers and $100 million in revenue that Richard Beckman, the site’s recently departed president, told the New York Times last March.”
Over the last eight months, I cannot remember a single instance where The Messenger hit my radar. And in this media environment where billions of corporate media dollars are spent to protect Democrats and cover up their corruption and scandals, it is not difficult for an outlet with $50 million to stand out. But first, they have to stand up. The formula is simple: all a Messenger has to do is use those 500 journalists to hold Democrats as accountable as the corporate media holds Republicans. The result would be phenomenal. Millions of normal people starved for the truth will flock to you. That’s what Breitbart does, and we’re hiring.
These Messenger people are just stupid. There is a huge void in news coverage half the country is waiting to see filled, but rather than make money and do journalism, these idiots protect their access and status. The front page of The Messenger is a joke filled with dull headlines you can read anywhere. It doesn’t look much better than those AI sites that create a front page by scraping from other sites.
As I wrote on Tuesday, the “Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, Gawker, Jezebel, BuzzFeed News, Vice, and CNN are all shuttered or shrinking.”
So we can now add The Messenger to the good riddance pile.
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