Now Hear This!

Bloomberg newswire on Wednesday ran an obituary for Steve Jobs, prompting one EDN reader to leave a very loud voicemail demanding to know why we didn’t cover the death of “one of the greatest minds” in technology. Uh, well, because he’s not dead.

Doing some online tests, Bloomberg mistakenly ran the obit, which traces Jobs’ life in a somewhat accurate, but rather dry fashion, exhibiting the reporters’ ignorance of tech history.

The 17-page long obit, which gossip blog Gawker picked up before Bloomberg tore it down, was published along with reporters notes on who to call for comment, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and Heidi Roizen, a venture capitalist who once dated Jobs, and the phone numbers of some of those contacts.

After the obit ran for a brief period, Bloomberg issued a very vague retraction Wednesday afternoon:

"An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today. The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted."

Now, it’s not unusual for a mega media outlet like Bloomberg to have obits for notable people ready on file, but given his battle with pancreatic cancer and his rather thin appearance at Worldwide Developers Conference in June, not to mention the flow of blogs following the keynote that speculated on his health, it’s not surprising that the accidental obit sent a chill down some spines.

The Apple exec and, as Bloomberg’s obit describes him, “arbiter of cool technology” is the face of Apple. Unlike Microsoft, which set Ballmer up well in advance of Gates’ pseudo-retirement, Jobs remains the person most publicly associated with the iPhone-iPod-Mac giant. Justin Long from the “Hello, I’m a Mac” commercials is perhaps the second most recognizable and he’s an actor.

This Bloomberg mistake begs a question that’s been asked more than once: Is Jobs’ health a matter of public business? Apple is a publicly traded company and when rumors swirled that Jobs was suffering a relapse earlier this year, the AAPL stock slipped. And what will Apple do once Jobs forgo his role, be it for health reasons, retirement, or whatever? Share your thoughts below.

Meanwhile, you have to wonder what Jobs thought of the obit. Did he chuckle about it over dinner? Was he annoyed at the Microsoft references? Or did he think the 17 pages didn’t do him justice?

--Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News