Matthew Keys, most recently the deputy social media editor for Reuters, was fired today following last month's accusations that he had conspired with Anonymous hackers to gain access to Tribune Company computers and modify a news story on the L.A. Times website. After a long week of retweeting news coming out of Boston, Keys took to Twitter to announce he had been cut from the team:

Echoing his vow to fight hacking accusation, Keys says the Newspaper Guild of New York will be filing a grievance over his dismissal. After a flurry of media types on Twitter immediately connected the firing with the hacking case, Keys says that was not the reason for his dismissal:

Instead, Keys claims he is being fired for violating a written warning he received from Reuters after creating @PendingLarry a parody account of Google CEO Larry Page. Keys posted his "first and final" warning letter online, which states that the parody account violated Reuters' Code of Conduct.

Although Keys has been suspended without pay since the Department of Justice handed down their indictment last month, the former deputy social media editor kept working on his own during last week's tumultuous news cycle, relentlessly tweeting information — not all of it correct — coming out of Boston. His firing today was apparently unexpected and as he told Politico this morning, he assumes his former employers was "looking for an out."

"It’s my understanding that Reuters did not agree with some of the coverage I did on my own during the Boston Marathon events from last week," Keys told Politico. "And they have a specific set of reasons for the termination which I don’t agree with and the union that represents me does not agree with."

Late last week, in a The Awl documented some of Keys' Boston coverage in a post dissecting the recently created role of "social media editor" at various news organizations, which led with this back-and-forth between Keys and Buzzfeed editor Mike Hayes:

Update, 2:30 p.m.: In a response posted to his blog this afternoon, Keys lays out several reasons Reuters gave for his dismissal: his coverage of events in Boston last violated the October grievance regarding his behavior on social media and Reuters had a problem with Keys identifying himself as their employee in his Twitter bio while he was on suspension.

"That is a Catch 22 for me," he wrote, saying that removing the mention from his bio would have also violated the company's police and the earlier infraction. The company also disagreed with Keys' decision to tweet information from Boston Police scanner traffic, even after the department asked media outlets not to do so and called some of his reporting "reckless." Although his firing was apparently unrelated to the earlier hacking and conspiracy allegations, Keys claims, "[t]he suspension has been political from the start."

[Politico]
[TheAwl]