The Chattanooga Times Free Press has fired editor Drew Johnson after criticizing President Obama in an article that quickly went viral, titled “Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President,” the day President Obama visited the city.

According to the paper, the headline was “inappropriate” and “outside of normal editing procedures.”

“It was not the original headline approved for publication, and Johnson violated the normal editing process when he changed the headline,” the Free Press wrote Thursday. “The newspaper’s decision to terminate Johnson had nothing to do with the content of the editorial, which criticized the president’s job creation ideas and Chattanooga’s Smart Grid. The Free Press page has often printed editorials critical of the president and his policies.”

Mr. Johnson took to Twitter to express his shock.

“I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper’s most-read article,” he wrote, adding “we change headlines all the time without incident or issue.”

“We change headlines all the time at the last minute,” he tweeted to WRCB News Director Derrall Stalvey. “I had a filler headline in that stunk and thought of that Johnny Paycheck song.”

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