“The Bloomberg financial newswire decided to update its 17-page Steve Jobs obituary [on Wednesday] — and inadvertently published it in the process. Some investors were undoubtedly rattled to see, as our tipster did late this afternoon, the Apple CEO’s obit cross the wire and then suddenly disappear,” Ryan Tate reports for Gawker.

“Bloomberg has ‘retracted’ its obituary… More interesting are the accompanying notes for Bloomberg reporters [which] 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 [and Jon Rubinstein, former head of Apple's iPod division, now chairman at Palm; Al Gore; Bill Gates; and many more]. Also, Bloomberg doesn’t seem to have many people’s cell phone numbers,” Tate reports.

Read the full article, including the full text of Bloomberg’s obit, here.

Caroline McCarthy reports for CNET, “It’s not out of the ordinary at all that Bloomberg would have this written; all major news outlets have notable persons’ obituaries prepared in advance so that only minor changes need be made at the actual time of death. That way, the news can be reported almost immediately and can be updated with further detail.
But a Jobs obituary, however premature, is more chilling than, say, a Bill Gates obituary.”

“So given a CEO whose health has been discussed so speculatively in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, and whose company’s stock has been shown to be far from immune to the influence of the rumor mill, the appearance–however brief–of a Jobs obituary online must certainly have been disquieting for those who stumbled upon it,” McCarthy reports.

McCarthy reports, “Bloomberg released a retraction later on Wednesday that made only the vaguest of reference to the content of the gaffe. ‘An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today,’ the retraction read. ‘The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.’”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Vague Nomenclature" and "Adam W." for the heads up.]

Once upon a time, they said Apple was “dead,” too.

Um, hello, SEC? We have a few questions:
• How does a text update get “mistakenly” posted live online at Bloomberg, exactly?
• Did anyone profit from this “mistake?”
• If so, are they connected in any way to those who “mistakenly” posted this story at Bloomberg?