Apple's CEO Steve Jobs is alive!

Poor Steve Jobs. Can you imagine yourself happily surfing the net one day, only to read your own obituary online? That's what happened to the Apple CEO. On Wednesday, Bloomberg News accidentally published an obituary of Steve Jobs.



The obit was marked “HOLD FOR RELEASE — DO NOT USE — HOLD FOR RELEASE — DO NOT USE.” You can read the obit in full here. Interesting to note that it also comes with a list of people for Bloomberg reporters to call in event of his death.

A commenter calling himself "Former CNN employee" left a comment on the Apple 2.0 blog post titled "How Steve Job's obit got published", saying that such "dead file" are common in the industry:

"CNN and other orgs have what’s called a “dead file.” Those notes complete with phone numbers and contacts are ALWAYS there. I remember reading CNN’s dead file for both the pope and Reagan. What astounded me was that I could (as an employee) see phone numbers of senators, celebrities and other dignitaries through an unrestricted posting in the iNews system. It doesn’t shock me that other orgs keep dead files either. Planning for the unexpected is what makes news orgs stand apart when the unexpected does actually occur."

Bloomberg has retracted the obit and said that the item was never meant for publication. I think what they really meant was that they are keeping it for future use.