Jimmy Finkelstein's News Startup, the Messenger, Reveals Ad … – Business Insider

• Jimmy Finkelstein’s startup The Messenger will roll out an ad campaign touting its mission to provide unbiased news.
• Its president, Richard Beckman, detailed how the site will deliver on its promise of balance.
• Advertisers say it’ll be tough to sell ads on a site without an established audience.

Jimmy Finkelstein’s news site The Messenger will have to sell a lot of ads to reach its lofty revenue goals when it launches May 15 — but will advertisers buy it?

To catch up: Finkelstein and Condé Nast veteran Richard Beckman have raised $50 million from investors including Loews CEO James Tisch, Apollo co-founder Josh Harris, and holding company The Stagwell Group. They’re launching the site Monday with the core verticals of news and politics, with seven other verticals including business, entertainment, and sports to follow later in the year. Events and newsletters are also on the roadmap for 2023. 

The staff had been working out of WeWork locations and recently moved to offices in Manhattan’s financial district.

The Messenger has announced a plan to nab $100 million in revenue by the end of 2024 — profitably — and 100 million monthly unique visitors, which would put it ahead of The New York Times Digital, Condé Nast Digital, and Insider, per Comscore. To build an audience, they plan to hire around 550 journalists, having already brought on 175 including People alum Dan Wakeford, who’s leading the newsroom; former Politico editor Marty Kady; and onetime Gizmodo EIC David Ewalt. The Messenger has also hired several former Insider journalists.

Finkelstein and Beckman’s pitch is that consumers are sick of biased news — and that they can attract a big audience and advertisers with a balanced and nonpartisan approach. To measure their effort, they plan to create a panel of readers and experts to evaluate how balanced The Messenger’s coverage is and to publish its findings on a regular basis. 

They’re also experimenting with tech that will pick key stories and enable readers to swipe left or right to get different viewpoints on the same issues.

An ad campaign by Publicis unit Le Truc will kick off May 22 and is designed to provoke, with copy like “Agendas are for meetings. Not reporters.” and “No cloaks. No daggers. Just news.” It also lays out a tagline: “It’s time to break the news.”

Digital publishing has always been a tough business (see: Vice Media, BuzzFeed), and the current economy hasn’t been kind to the sector. While many established digital publishers have erected paywalls to survive, The Messenger is going the free, ad-supported route. But a lot of advertisers avoid hard news, no matter how fair and balanced. 

Recent news launches like Puck and Semafor started with modest fundraises ($7 million and $25 million, respectively) and emphasize writers’ voices over institutional brands. 

The Messenger said it’ll have three to four big advertisers at launch as well as a significant amount of programmatic advertising. It expects to have two launch partners for each vertical as they roll out. “I’ve launched probably 50 media brands over my career, and I haven’t pitched something where I’ve had such ubiquitous acceptance,” Beckman said of advertiser response to the pitch.

But three separate holding company execs who saw the pitch told Insider they’re holding back on committing, despite having enthusiasm about the launch of a news site with the caliber of The Messenger’s hires. Comparisons were made to Quibi, the short-lived video service that raised $1.75 billion ahead of its launch and recruited A-list talent yet left advertisers high and dry when it collapsed.

“It’s a difficult market to launch something without an audience, proven traction, credibility,” said one agency exec. “Investors better have deep pockets and prepare for a long runway.”

“Unless there’s something really compelling in how they’re telling the story, there’s nothing there. News is a hard place to be,” said the second ad exec.

The third said while there’s an opening for a news outlet in light of Vice Media’s challenges and the shuttering of BuzzFeed News, The Messenger is “not cheap” given it’s unproven. Clients would need to see proof points before signing on, this person added. “We can’t have another Quibi.” 

The duo aren’t publishing neophytes. Finkelstein was part owner of The Hill and The Hollywood Reporter. Beckman was former sales president at Condé Nast, where his aggressive sales style earned him the nickname “Mad Dog;” he also served as president of The Hill under Finkelstein. 

During Finkelstein’s tenure, The Hill came under fire for bias relating to the work of John Solomon, whose columns pushed right-wing conspiracy theories. The site published a review of Solomon’s work that was critical of his sourcing but did not retract any of it. 

Finkelstein described his vision for The Messenger to The New York Times as “something that changes journalism a bit and changes America for the good” with a nonpartisan voice. He told The Times he’s known former President Donald Trump for decades and that he’s also friendly with people on the left. 

Even though search and social media referrals have long driven publisher traffic, the duo have waxed nostalgic about brands like “60 Minutes” and “Meet the Press” and talk about restoring a “golden age” of newspapers. 

Beckman cited The Times’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton and CNN criticizing conservatives as examples of biased coverage The Messenger wants to avoid. He also separated The Messenger’s ambitions — to reach a broad audience — from recent launches like Puck, Punchbowl, and Semafor.

“It is what it is,” he said of Semafor. “I think they did themselves a great disservice with the hugely expansive comments they made about, they were gonna change the world and do this and do that and do the other. And it’s tough to do that when only three people and a cat read you, you know?”

Ben Smith, editor in chief of Semafor, replied, “We wish them luck with a 2012-style scaled website model!” He added that Semafor is “very pleased” with its scale and quality in newsletters, events, web, and video.

Even some media observers who believe there’s an untapped market for objective news — and are rooting for journalists to be hired — question The Messenger’s vision.

“Regarding this particular cast of characters and their outrageous claims for The Messenger, I simply don’t believe they’ll have the market support or staying power to make it a go,” said Tom Morrissy, chief growth officer at the agency Noble People and former publisher of Entertainment Weekly and OK! 

“As my most generous assessment,” Morrissy added, “it would absolutely be a wait-and-see for me to see the content they put out in the world, the profile and scale of the audience they develop, and their overall business growth to earn the investment.”