Matthew Keys, a deputy social media editor with Thomson Reuters, allegedly handed out login information for his former employer the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times and other news outlets.

Keys had worked for Tribune Broadcasting as a web producer for Sacramento Fox affiliate KTXL Fox 40 before going freelance for a few months and eventually landing at San Francisco's KGO-TV, where he was told "not to tweet more than six times an hour." The login information Keys gave out to hackers from the activist group Anonymous was enough for them to access and make changes to a web version of a Los Angeles Times news feature. According to the press release from the Department of Justice, Keys may have even encouraged them to screw with the site. The arraignment doesn't say when the alleged changes hit the LA Times, but a commenter on another site noted the Los Angeles Times had been hacked on December 14th, 2010.

His personal bio states that his blog on "journalism, social media and current events" is followed by respected media outlets like the LA Times and NBC News. The Huffington Post even named him one of the 50 People in Media You Should Subscribe To On Facebook, and he was one of Time Magazine's 140 twitter must-follows.

Keys currently lives in New York, but he is charged in Sacramento with three counts of conspiring to damage protected computers. If convicted, he faces up to ten years in prison, three years probation and up to $750,000 in fines. It also sounds like he'll have to forfeit his laptop.

As of this afternoon, Keys had yet to acknowledge the accusations on Twitter. Scratch that, Keys retweeted the story from @BreakingNews:


Update, March 15th: Keys has been suspended by Reuters.

[DoJ]
[Politico]
[BusinessInsider]