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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
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Margaret Sullivan

The spectacular collapse of the Messenger is a lesson on how not to do journalism

Screenshot of the Messenger's 'About us' page.
‘They launched an ad-supported site intended to grab traffic from social and search without a working sitemap,’ said data engineer Aram Zucker-Scharff. Photograph: themessenger.com

The new journalism outlet began less than a year ago to considerable fanfare. Claiming it would be unbiased and indispensable, the Messenger recruited hundreds of journalists, paid its executives lavishly and confidently forecast $100m in annual revenue this year.

It would be like the good old days when the media was beloved, its founder predicted.

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