The Latest Media Death Is Somehow Even Darker Than Usual

The Messenger had a splashy, spendy launch. Less than a year later, the company is dead, with no severance for its staff.

Screenshot via TheMessenger.com

I’m still not really sure what The Messenger was or who it was for, but clearly neither were its founders, who shut down the site “effective immediately” yesterday, less than one year after it launched. In that time, they hired some 300 journalists and burned through a staggering investment of $38 million, according to The New York Times.

If we’ve learned anything from mass media layoffs—which, if you’re in the industry, you’ve probably learned about firsthand by now—it’s that they’re never handled with an ounce of human decency. But, somehow, it seems like matters were handled even more poorly than usual at The Messenger. It’s hard to imagine how a company could treat people worse than they’re typically treated, but the severity and cruelty of The Messenger’s approach seems to have done the impossible.

I base that on updates like this:

Unreal. And that’s just the start. As these following tweets show, it gets worse.