Late last month, Bloomberg mistakenly sent out an incomplete obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs over the wire, and a tipster promptly sent the quickly-retracted file to gossip blog Gawker.
Many news organizations prep obituaries of prominent newsmakers in advance of their death in an effort to be as complete and immediate as possible when that time does come. And there's a whole Wikipedia entry on ones that have been released prematurely.
But the Jobs' obituary was particularly chilling because of his battle earlier this decade with pancreatic cancer, which he reportedly kept a secret for nine months while researching alternative treatments.
In addition, when Jobs appeared onstage at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2008, his thin appearance led some bloggers and company critics to speculate that he was ill again, and some of them demanded that Apple reveal the state of the executive's health to shareholders.
Jobs, for his part, managed to make light of the publishing gaffe last week at a fall product line unveiling event. The screen on stage displayed a message that said, "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
Photo by Gawker
Caption by Michelle Meyers
