Categories: OLD Media Moves

Ex-social media editor at Reuters sentenced to two years

The former deputy social media editor for Reuters was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in federal prison for helping to hack the website of The Los Angeles Times in 2010.

Christopher Mele of the New York Times writes, “The journalist, Matthew Keys, who was a deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters at the time, was convicted in October of providing the hacking group Anonymous with a user name and password to log in to computers owned by the Tribune Company, parent company of The Times.

“A federal indictment said that Mr. Keys, 29, had encouraged the hackers, with whom he worked in December 2010, to log in to a Tribune server ‘to make unauthorized changes to websites’ and ‘to damage computer systems’ owned by the company.

“The hackers changed the Times headline ‘Pressure Builds in House to Pass Tax-Cut Package’ to ‘Pressure Builds in House to Elect CHIPPY 1337,’ a reference to another hacking group.

“Mr. Keys previously was a web producer at KTXL Fox 40, a Sacramento television station owned by Tribune. Federal prosecutors in Sacramento said that Mr. Keys, of Vacaville, Calif., was a disgruntled worker striking back at his former employer.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.