David Leavitt, a freelance writer and Twitch streamer, decided to tweet out a few idiotic jokes after news broke of the fatal bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. (Leavitt deleted the first tweet, below is the screen grab.)
Leavitt has written for CBS Local, the now-defunct Examiner, and AXS.com, which appeared to have scrubbed his work from the site. He admitted to CJR, however, that he makes much of his money from sponsored Instagram posts and tweets. “These days,” he said, “I find that I’m getting paid more for a sponsored tweet or Instagram post that takes less than a minute, than I do for actual journalism.”
Leavitt apologized a few hours later, claiming—despite having tweeted “multiple fatalities confirmed”—that he didn’t realize the “magnitude of the tragedy.”
Then he completed the bad post-backlash-apology cycle by trying to tweet through it with some GIFs and dumb hashtags. Good luck with those Instagram sponsorships.