The Washington Post apologized for its tweet asking readers to buy the newspaper, TBD reported. The Washington Post’s PostLocal Twitter account tweeted “We love the RTs, but you know, you could read a lot of these stories by simply feeding 75 cents into a corner newspaper box.”

The Washington Post hasn’t identified which “regular staffer” tweeted the request, but its deputy local editor for digital, Jane Elizabeth, reportedly explained that the message wasn’t “quite what we meant” because of Twitter’s character limit. The Post tweeted out an apology just “seven minutes later” saying  “I didn’t intend to be rude with the tweet about buying the paper.”

In response to criticism from one tweeter, LAmeetsDC, the PostLocal account  explained that the message was “intended as a thanks and a wink” but “the idea went awry.”