Messenger founder and CEO Jimmy Finkelstein defended the company’s business model in an interview with Axios Tuesday, claiming that the outlet would have been profitable by August if it had remained open.
The Messenger closed in January, less than a year after it launched with $50 million in funding and more than 175 journalists. Finkelstein, who previously owned The Hill, had big ambitions for the online, centrist startup; he planned to grow the newsroom to 550 people, generate more than $100 million in revenue and reach 100 million monthly readers.
Many media watchers had doubts about The Messenger’s business model — which was predicated on advertising — from the start. On Jan. 31, the company abruptly laid off its 300-person staff without severance and closed its website after Finkelstein failed to raise enough money to keep the company open.
“I have absolute confidence that by August, we would have been profitable,” Finkelstein told Axios. “If we raised the $20 million, we would have been absolutely profitable. So I think that our model — which everybody decided on their own was an old model, it’s just not their model — was working.”
Finkelstein said The Messenger saw traffic grow significantly in January, and he had projected $60 million in revenue and three to four hundred million pageviews for 2024. But he said poor economic conditions and bad press limited his ability to find investors. The Messenger was also hindered by a six-month delay in launching its website. During that time, the company spent $20 million.
Before its closure, several Messenger executives took pay cuts, Finkelstein said. He himself took a 50% cut. Asked why he didn’t close the site earlier so that he could pay out severance to employees, Finkelstein told Axios that he thought he could work out a deal to keep the site open. He came close to selling The Messenger to the Los Angeles Times — which has also been experiencing financial issues and layoffs — but the deal fell apart at the last minute.
After Axios suggested that he use some of his multimillion-dollar fortune to pay out employees’ severance, Finkelstein said, “I put a lot of money into this site at the end to keep it going.” He added, “There are some things I might consider doing,” but did not offer more details.
The Messenger currently faces a lawsuit from former employees, who allege the company violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act by failing to provide advance notice of the layoffs. About the suit, Finkelstein said, “We are not concerned about that.”
Finkelstein said he is considering reopening The Messenger’s website but did not provide a timeline. After the layoffs, some former journalists complained that they could not access their work to use as clips when applying for new jobs. Finkelstein told Axios that he gave employees passwords to access their content last week.
By Angela Fu, media business reporter
‘Immense change’ is coming to CNN
Big shifts are coming to CNN, according to a post on X from Washington Post media reporter Jeremy Barr.
“Immense change is coming, and I don’t use that lightly,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson reportedly said at an all-bureau CNN meeting in London on Tuesday.
In a year that has already seen numerous layoffs, closures and cuts — at the Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, Condé Nast, National Geographic, NBC News and The Messenger — “immense change” sounds ominous.
CNN last completed a round of layoffs in December 2022, impacting “a couple hundred” employees, including big names such as political analyst Chris Cillizza.
And, last month, Thompson wrote a memo to staff outlining his vision for the cable network to embrace a “true multimedia strategy” to combine all of CNN’s news operations under one umbrella.
We’ll have to wait and see what “immense change” means for CNN. (We know it won’t be a morning show.)
By Annie Aguiar, audience engagement producer
Here’s Jonny!
Jon Stewart is back in his chair as host of “The Daily Show.” Did he ever leave?
He “wasn’t sitting at his desk at Comedy Central for the last nine years, waiting for someone to turn the lights back on. Yet it almost felt that way …” Associated Press media writer David Bauder wrote.
“The GOAT of late night satire is back,” NPR TV critic Eric Deggans wrote.
Stewart opened Monday’s debut show with a 20-minute skewering of Donald Trump and Joe Biden and their struggles to recall details during recent legal battles.
“It turns out, the leading cause of early onset dementia is being deposed,” Stewart joked, pivoting quickly between wisecracks and the trademark sharp criticism that launched him into stardom in his 16-year run as host of the show. He noted that some would say it’s unfair to compare Biden’s gaffes with Trump’s behavior, but that tackling voter concerns is part of the presidential gig. “It’s the candidate’s job to assuage concerns,” he said, “not the voter’s job not to mention them.”
“Public figures are served notice that the media’s sharpest bull detector is back on the job,” Bauder wrote.
Stewart will host Monday episodes of “The Daily Show” until the 2024 presidential election.
Before his departure in 2015, Stewart was a massive ratings draw. He inspired an entire genre of crisp, late-night political commentary. Will his return performance do the same?
“With luck, Stewart’s appeal to The Daily Show’s old school fans will bring better ratings on (Comedy Central), but it’s still likely to be a smaller crowd than he once commanded,” Deggans wrote. “Regardless, last night’s program shows Stewart’s still got the comedy chops and incisive ideas to power the show at least through the presidential election in November.”
By Ren LaForme, managing editor
A bold election prediction: Biden wins!
Even before the well-meaning-forgetful-elderly-man stuff, Democrats and left-leaning media have been looking gloomily at tea leaves suggesting that Donald Trump has Joe Biden outflanked politically. So here is a cheer-up alternative view for them from the economic forecasting unit at Moody’s Analytics: It’ll be a “nail-biter,” but Biden will prevail, says the ratings service’s chief economist, Mark Zandi, and his associates. Rising household income and easing gas prices are among the factors they argue will break in Biden’s favor.
By Rick Edmonds, media business analyst
Media tidbits and links
- The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin with “Paramount Lays Off Hundreds of Workers.” Wall Street Journal’s Isabella Simonetti reported that those layoffs include “roughly 20 people” at CBS News, some of whom were based in its D.C. bureau.
- Most newspapers are cutting back their print products. The Deseret News in Utah launched a new one in September. It has been profitable since October. For more, read Poynter’s Angela Fu with “One Utah paper is making money with a novel idea: print.”
- George Santos was expelled from Congress in December, but it seems he wasn’t ready to step out of the limelight. For a cool $250, he’ll make you a custom video on Cameo. Slate’s Scott Nover with “Welcome to the Creator Economy, George Santos!”
- Press Forward, the initiative that plans to inject $500 million into local news, announced that Dale R. Anglin has been named the inaugural director. Anglin is a vice president at the Cleveland Foundation, where she led the effort to invest in a regional network of nonprofit journalism initiatives, including Documenters Cleveland and Signal Ohio. Here’s a Q&A about Anglin’s career and how she plans to approach her role at Press Forward.
- The New York Amsterdam News, one of America’s oldest Black newspapers, has hired journalist and author Aaron Foley as news editor. A Detroit native, Foley comes to AmNews from the PBS NewsHour. He was previously the first director of CUNY’s Black Media Initiative at the Center for Community Media at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
- The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, Nicole Auerbach, Stewart Mandel and Chris Vannini with “College Football Playoff, ESPN agree to 6-year extension worth $1.3 billion per year: Sources.”
- The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum with “Who Speaks for the President? Depends on Whom You Ask.”
- NPR’s Rachel Treisman with “Grover the Muppet says he’s a reporter. Not for long, joke his beleaguered peers.”
More resources for journalists
- The 2024 Poynter Journalism Prizes are open for entries. To enter, go to the contest website. The deadline for entries is Feb. 16.
- Delve more deeply into your editing skills with Poynter ACES Intermediate Certificate in Editing. Start anytime.
- Get the edge on reporting on the seven hot topics of the 2024 election with Beat Academy (webinar series) — Rolling enrollment from now through September. Enroll today.
- Subscribe to Poynter’s Friday newsletter, Open Tabs with Poynter managing editor Ren LaForme, and get behind-the-scenes stories only available to subscribers.
Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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