Ryan Tate of Gawker reports that Bloomberg News mistakenly published its prepared obituary of Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday.
Tate writes, “But news organizations routinely prepare obituaries in advance, even for the healthy. And if Bloomberg readers had seen the internal story slug, ‘testjobs,’ their jitters might have abated. The obit, which we’ve obtained and reprinted after the jump, is a bit macabre to read but should not scare you out of your Apple shares. (UPDATE: Bloomberg has “retracted” its obituary, and the retraction is also after the jump.) More interesting are the accompanying notes for Bloomberg reporters!
“The obituary contains nothing to indicate Bloomberg has new information on Jobs’s health, at least in our quick skim.
“But the reporting notes do reveal that near the top of Bloomberg’s list of people to call in event of his death is Jobs’s ex girlfriend Heidi Roizen (quite the Valley switchboard, apparently) and California attorney general and (like Jobs) cranky aging hippie Jerry Brown. Also, Bloomberg doesn’t seem to have many people’s cell phone numbers.”
Read more here.