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It’s one of the most embarrassing – and, to the subject of the written piece, offensive – things that a media outlet can do to a person.

 

Mark Twain’s astonishing creation – Huckleberry Finn – embraced the opportunity to watch people mourn him at a funeral after they mistakenly thought him dead, and the great writer famously quipped following his own premature obituary in 1897: “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

 

According to reports, the IT world held its breath – though for a far shorter period than the instant communication-less literati did in 1897 – when Bloomberg News yesterday published an obituary of Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs (News - Alert). The mistake was first recognized by Gawker.

 

“The stock story detailing the death of the Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple (News - Alert) founder, who is still alive, appeared ‘momentarily’ after a reporter had updated it, Bloomberg said. The incomplete obit was distinctly marked ‘Hold for release — Do not use,’ the reports said,” according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

 

Here’s how the opening paragraph of the obituary looked, according to the Chronicle: “Steve Jobs, who helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music and refashioned the mobile phone, has XXXX. He was TK. Jobs XXXX, TK said XXXXX.”

 

Bloomberg (News - Alert), a news services founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, published this retraction note: “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 The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.”

 

Part of what makes the incident difficult to make light of is that Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. According to reports, Jobs has been reluctant to publicly discuss his health, and recently denied claims that his cancer had returned.

 

According to the Chronicle, Jobs’ only public discussion of the subject came in a 2004 commencement address at Stanford, where he said, “No one wants to die. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.”

 

He told the graduates that he had been diagnosed with a tumor on his pancreas and that his doctors gave him six months to live. Later that day, a biopsy revealed he had a rare form of cancer treatable with surgery. “I had the surgery and I’m fine now,” Jobs told his audience, adding, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

 

Prior cases of premature obituaries have yielded less lugubrious reactions.

 

When a Dutch newspaper reported the artist James Whistler dead following a heart attack, he wrote to the journal and said that reading his obituary induced “a tender glow of health.”

 

In a recent, infamous example, New York Yankees great Joe DiMaggio’s obituary was broadcast by NBC in January 1999, as a text report running along the bottom of a TV screen.

 

Apparently the text, which DiMaggio himself saw, had been pre-prepared following newspaper reports that DiMaggio was near death, and was transmitted when a technician pressed the wrong button.

 

Other famously “dead” people include Paul McCartney, Nelson Mandela and every member of Scandinavian pop band ABBA.

 

Some speculate that the premature obituary of arms manufacturer Alfred Nobel, a piece that described him as a “merchant of death,” spurred the man to create the Nobel Prize.

 

In the case of Jobs, some speculate, the fact of his obituary already being prepared may spur the Apple chief to disclose more information about his health.

 

According to writer Richard Koman of “CIO Today,” investors must be aware now that Jobs’ health is in question.

 

“He has apparently had another operation this year, unrelated to the cancer. Apple has been less than forthcoming about the nature of the operation and has yet to definitively dismiss the question of pancreatic cancer,” Koman writes.