Matthew Keys

When Matthew Keys tweeted on Monday morning that he had been fired from his position as deputy social media editor at Reuters, speculation spread quickly on the Internet.

Mr. Keys, who last month was indicted for conspiring with the hacker group Anonymous to gain illegal access to the website of The Los Angeles Times, had already been suspended, with pay, from his job, and many assumed that the firing was related to the criminal charges brought against him.

But in a blog post on his personal website, Mr. Keys listed various other reasons for his termination—based on a telephone conversation he said he had had with Reuters—that were unrelated to the indictment, such as tweeting inaccurate information from a police scanner after the Boston Marathon bombing and identifying himself as a “Reuters journalist” while suspended.

“Still,” Mr. Keys wrote, “one has to wonder if they are connected.” If he has learned anything from this debacle, however, it may be that he should wait to draw any conclusions. Meanwhile, the 26-year-old “wunderkind of new media,” as he was once dubbed in The New York Times, has filed a grievance with his union.

“Our contract with Thomson Reuters prohibits management from dismissing anyone without just and sufficient cause,” said Peter Szekely, secretary-treasurer of the Newspaper Guild of New York, in a statement. “We don’t believe the company has the required justification here. At this point, we intend to vigorously defend Matthew Keys as we would any other hardworking member of the Newspaper Guild of New York who had been fired without cause.”

Mr. Keys’s firing comes at a time when some traditional and social media sites have taken heat for reporting inaccuracies in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. These include Reddit, whose users launched a kind of vigilante detective tear to find the bombers, which “fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation,” as Reddit’s general manager Erik Martin, who apologized for the manhunt, wrote on Monday. In light of this, firing someone for errant tweeting seems like a harsh punishment, especially since, as Mr. Keys has pointed out, Reuters itself has reported information from police scanners in the past.

Still, it would seem that Mr. Keys, who now has more than 35,000 followers on Twitter, has a responsibility not to report unconfirmed information, as he did after the bombing. “Just in: Suspect 2 on the ground at gunpoint,” Mr. Keys tweeted on Friday; it was retweeted nearly 250 times and turned out to be incorrect, which Mr. Keys himself pointed out in a later tweet.

Such recklessness prompted Choire Sicha to publish a post on The Awl last week titled “Is Your Social Media Editor Destroying Your News Organization Today?” In the post, Mr. Sicha singled out Mr. Keys—and his Twitter account—writing, “The sheer amount of useless, misleading and random noise put out by this account is unreal.”

Reuters spokesperson David Girardin confirmed to Off the Record that Mr. Keys is no longer with the company, though he would not comment on why the social media editor was let go.

Mr. Keys—who could face 25 years in prison for allegedly providing Anonymous with information to log in to the server of the Tribune Company, among other charges—has more than just the Newspaper Guild on his side. Many concerned users took to Twitter on Monday to show their support. One Twitter user, ChristineKaratnytsky, wrote, “As a librarian, I valued your commitment to truth/accuracy. I think Reuters errs in judgment. You deserve public support.”

The ever-opinionated Jose Canseco even entered the fray. In a tweet directed to BuzzFeed politics reporter Andrew Kaczynski, Mr. Canseco wrote: “Andy hire Matt @thematthewkeys reuters totally hosed him for doing his job. when did reuters become pravda.”

Mr. Keys tweeted back: “May I use you as a reference?”

On Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources yesterday, political video prodigy Andrew Kaczynski announced he will be joining Ben Smith's team at BuzzFeed, beginning January 1.

A 22 year-old history student at St. John's University, Mr. Kaczynski is as cubby as they come. But he’s already made a name for himself on the 2012 campaign beat with unseen video footage of primary candidates spouting hypocritical views, which he digs out of C-SPAN's massive online archive.

“When I’m not with my girlfriend, or in class, or doing homework, it is really what I spend most of my time doing,” Mr. Kaczynski told Off the Record in an e-mail.

He unearthed a clip of Newt Gingrich supporting a health insurance mandate alongside Hilary Clinton and a choice pot-meet-kettle moment in which Mitt Romney decried John Kerry's flip-flopping, among others. The videos have caught the attention of attention of reporters for The New York Times, Fox News, and The Huffington Post.

As has Mr. Kaczynski. Slate political columnist Dave Weigel called him “the Oppenheimer of archival video research.”

For those skeptical of the shift underway at BuzzFeed—the funny photo aggregator with sudden aspirations of journalistic prestige—Mr. Kaczynski seems to perfectly embody its new hybrid mandate. He’s a viral video artist, sure, but his videos happen to break news.

In the mold of  Nate Silver, Mr. Kaczynski carved a lucrative niche for himself outside of traditional political media, building a personal brand out from his natural obsessions. Now he’ll benefit from the guidance and oversight of Mr. Smith, an experienced political reporter who was recently crowned BuzzFeed editor in chief.

"Andrew's grasp of the online video world is, I think, basically unique," Mr. Smith wrote Off the Record. "We're going to help him figure out and explain what's news, and to expose it to the broadest possible audience."

Until now, Mr. Kaczynski had obsessing pro bono, posting the C-SPAN gold to his YouTube and Twitter accounts and watching them reverberate across the political media (and acquiring more than 10,000 followers in the process). Mr. Kaczynski will now work part-time for BuzzFeed until graduation, when Mr. Smith hopes to hire him full-time.

"I'm not sure how he's managed his studies with this obsession, but he's already doing it, and he might as well make a few bucks," Mr. Smith wrote. "He's going to be one more New York City college kid juggling school and work."

Mr. Kazcynski's choice of employer may have some campaigns breathing a sigh of relief.

As New York pointed out, by uncovering embarrassing or entertaining videos, Mr. Kaczynski inadvertently occupied a role once reserved for the most ruthless political consultants--opposition researcher--minus the huge paychecks. One of his Mitt Romney finds was picked up and used in a Jon Huntsman attack ad.

But despite having internships for two House members and the Republican National Committee on his resume, Mr. Kazcynski decided to go take the non-partisan route in journalism.

“I found DC a little boring and realized I wanted to be involved in politics but not work in politics,” Mr. Kaczynski wrote.

Asked if Mr. Kazcynski represented the model for new BuzzFeed reporters—young, obsessive, digitally native—Mr. Smith said that the new team would “deeply understand” the Internet.

"I'm not sure they have to be young or native, though," he wrote, "I think I consider myself naturalized."