Carroll's writing career started when he was attending Catholic prep school in the 1960s; he chronicled his rapid descent into heroin addiction—and the lengths he went to get it, like prostituting himself for money to buy it—in his journals, which were turned into The Basketball Diaries. After gaining popularity in the 70s, the book surged to popularity again in the 80s when it was repackaged and republished, and again in the 90s, when they were adapted into a film with Leonardo DiCaprio playing Carroll.

Carroll quickly rose to fame as a downtown fixture on New York's punk scene after the publication of Diaries; he gained the accolades of and influence over Patti Smith, Harmony Korine, Keith Richards, Lou Reed, Pearl Jam, Rancid, and others over the years.

Carroll and his mentor, Ted Berrigan, once took a trip to see Carroll's idol, Jack Kerouac. When they got there, Kerouac supposedly said: "At thirteen years of age, Jim Carroll writes better prose than 89 percent of the novelists working today."

Writers, magazines, actors, rock stars continued to want to be a part of Carroll's ongoing narrative; if the CBGB of yore had a poet laureate, it would've been unanimously voted as him. At one point, he actually hit the stage of CBGB as a musician sometime after Patti Smith infamously made him get on stage with her to read. Shortly thereafter, he secured a three-record deal with Atlantic Records.

Carroll's personal life remained spotty. He moved from New York to San Francisco in lieu of escaping drugs, but since moved back. He married Rosemary Klemfuss in 1978., but they later divorced. Carroll, however, kept clean, continued to write, perform spoken word, and record music, prolifically so.

Caroll loved writers, and loved the act of writing as much as the art of it. Carroll's survived by his brother Tom. He will be missed. Here he is, talking about Frank O'Hara:

Jim Carroll, Poet and Punk Rocker, Is Dead at 60 [NYT]

The cause was bladder cancer, a family spokesman said. The spokesman had initially declined to confirm the death, saying the family had hoped to wait a day before making an announcement so that Mr. Dunne's obituary would not be obscured by the coverage of Senator Edward M. Kennedy's death.

Yes, but his own magazine had an obituary and a tribute up yesterday before 5 p.m.. Not confirming it at that point would seem to be a bit futile.

Still, no one wants to die right after a Kennedy. We suspect there may be as many as four celebrities who are dead right now but refuse to admit it. (Has anyone heard from Gore Vidal lately? There's someone whose pride would cause him to die on a slow news week.)

Dominick Dunne's People Waited So He Wouldn't Be Overshadowed By Ted Kennedy [Notas/Guanabee]

Update: New York Social Diary reported Dunne's passing a little after 3 p.m. yesterday, followed by the Observer and Huffington Post. We're told nearly everyone who knew the news early yesterday was "sworn to 'secrecy.'" VF may have meant to comply with the family's wishes and hold the announcement for a while, but once the news was out on the internet that probably wasn't a option.

Somehow, in an absolute dereliction of duty, we missed this: Bill O'Reilly, mourning the death of Keyboard Cat as a "patriot" back in May.

Not to be a tightass, but easy target O'Reilly - whose fire and brimstone scare tactics often involve throwing around his target audience's hot-button words...like "patriotism" - engages in a possibly ignorant act of self-parody here.

Then again, Keyboard Cat kind of is an American Patriot. So there's that.

McCourt's childhood was, to say the least, an incredibly sad one. He grew up in utter poverty first in Brooklyn, where he was born, then in Ireland, where his family moved when he was four years-old after being unable to find work during the Great Depression. What followed were years of McCourt being surrounded by alchoholism, sickness, depression, and hunger: three of his siblings died as children, his father was always looking for work, and he was forced to quit school when he was 13 in order to take odd jobs (including some slightly criminal ones) in order to help keep what remained of his family alive. This period in his life were the foundation for his first memoirs, 1996's Angela's Ashes, which launched him to worldwide fame. It won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and was adapted into a feature film.

McCourt moved back to Brooklyn when he was 19, where he was drafted into Military service for a short time before coming back and getting his masters degree to teach. He remained a public high school English teacher for thirty years, eventually ending up at, among other places, Manhattan's famed Stuyvesant High School, which has a pretty notable list of alumni. Much of these experiences were chronicled in his bestselling third memoir, Teacher Man. His second book, Tis, was also a bestseller; it's centered around his years emigrating his family back to America after the events chronicled in Angela's Ashes.

McCourt's survived by a daughter and a granddaughter. The man has far too many good quotes to pull from, but the LA Times sufficent obituary pulled a pretty good one that's very telling of his success story: a guy who found his fame in his later years, and was revered worldwide for it:

"We were all storytellers growing up," McCourt said of his family in a 2000 interview with the Toronto Sun. "That's all we had. There was no TV or radio. We'd sit around the fire and make up stories. My dad was a great storyteller. We'd mention a neighbor, and he'd make up a story.

"But I also had to be a great storyteller to survive teaching. I spent 30 years in the classroom. When you stand before 170 teenagers each day, you have to get and keep their attention. Their attention span is about seven minutes, which is the time between commercials. So you have to stay on your toes.

And then there's this one, from a New York Times op-ed McCourt wrote about teaching creative writing to high-schoolers:

They wanted to know why I was asking such crazy questions. I told them to figure it out for themselves. The last thing a writer needs is answers — the end of thought and the dream. But I could have told them what they sensed already: they were beginning to notice what they had previously taken for granted, ritual or the lack of it, the dance of the family dinner.

Where are the dreams and fantasies of childhood? The heads of adolescents are clogged with media images and sounds. The teacher, then, is the Knight or Fair Maid of the Imagination and the battle lines are drawn. Pull the plug, cut off the juice, let the batteries die. Just sit there and dream.

And when in doubt, tell a story.

Frank McCourt, late-blooming author of 'Angela's Ashes,' dies at 78 [LAT]
Frank McCourt, Author of ‘Angela's Ashes,' Dies at 78 [NYT]
"Angela's Ashes'' author Frank McCourt dead at 78 [Irish Central]

Mays claimed to be the last salesman trained by the old-school pitchmen. Among other things, he shilled: OxiClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom, ESPN 360, Impact Gel Insoles, Omni DualSaw, something called a Samurai Shark, the Grater Plater, and a bunch of other products you can find on his Wikipedia page. Mays also enjoyed crushing the dreams of children and was possibly the single most ubiquitous figure on television today, measured purely in face time according to the Washington Post.

Interestingly enough, Mays was actually a passenger on a "hard landing" US Airways flight that blew a tire upon arrival in Tampa last night. Nothing regarding Mays death has been tied to the incident as of this writing. Update: the FAA is now saying that Mays wasn't wearing his seatbelt during the landing. Mays' son Twittered his father's death:

Billy Mays appeared with his co-host Anthony Sullivan from the Discovery Channel's Pitchmen on The Tonight Show with Conan on June 10, 2009:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

And Mays appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno earlier this year (April 7) with Dana Carvey:

He's the third celebrity of note to die in a week, following Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Actually, the fourth, counting Ed McMahon. Jeff Goldblum and Harrison Ford were rumored to be dead, but they weren't. Meanwhile, a nation of people who weren't sure about that "bad things come in threes" shit are far less worried about the wallet they lost and they keys they forgot than whatever's going to happen next.

Update: According to BNO, Mays got knocked upside the head by something on the flight, and made a joke about it to a local TV station.

From the Guardian:

He was interested in "the evolving world, the world of hidden persuaders, of the communications landscape developing, of mass tourism, of the vast conformist suburbs dominated by television – that was a form of science fiction, and it was already here".

This focus was well chosen, helping Ballard produce fiction over the course of five ensuing decades.

Ballard is survived by three children, James, Fay and Beatrice.

[Guardian]

(Picture via)

Weber is believed to have been killed Friday; his radio coworkers, presumably on a freelance project, called police after he didn't show up for work Saturday or Sunday. His apartment was found ransacked, the back door open, but there was no sign of forced entry and it's not clear if anything was taken.

"Police were investigating the possibility he was killed by a male date," the Daily News reported.

Weber was laid off by WABC in February, after more than 12 years, and started freelancing for national ABC News radio, and posting more frequently to his personal blog.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who worked with Weber on Bloomberg's Friday show, issued a statement reading, in part, ""On or off the air, and especially during our commercial breaks, his views were incisive and insightful... George called news events as he saw them with little regard to party politics or ideology."

Like many a fine journalist, Weber had a favorite bar, the Blarney Rock, where his picture hangs on the wall. Judging from the quotes in the Daily News, Weber is already already missed there.

(Pic via GeorgeWeber.net)

Plath gassed herself at home in 1963, after sealing Nicholas and his sister Freida Hughes off in the room next door. Her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, had recently left her for Assia Wevill, another poet's wife, and Plath was struggling to make ends meet amid a harsh winter. Writes the Times of London in its excellent obituary:

Ted Hughes was hounded for the rest of his life by feminists and Plath devotees who accused him of driving her to her death by his infidelity.

In March 1969, six years after Plath's death, Wevill gassed herself and her four-year-old daughter in a suicide apparently modeled on Plath's.

Nicholas Hughes has recently left his post at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks to make pottery in his home studio. The evolutionary ecologist had been battling depression "for some time," according to his sister Freida Hughes. From her statement:

His lifelong fascination with fish and fishing was a strong and shared bond with our father (many of whose poems were about the natural world). He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan.

If the grisly deaths of Plath and Wevill sparked questions about the propensity of poets toward suicide, Nicholas Hughes' death highlights the ongoing debate over how genetics and suicide might be linked; the expert quoted by the Times emphasized the importance of "what's happening in the here and now" over any biological factors.

Hughes reached the age of 47 and became a professor, having clearly found at least some of the emotional shelter his mother wished on him. She wrote of him in Nick and the Candlestick, "You are the one/ Solid the spaces lean on, envious./ You are the baby in the barn."

[Times of London]

(Image via)

Richardson was born into showbiz royalty. The daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, her aunt Lynn and sister Joely are also acclaimed performers.

A London native, Richardson later moved to the U.S. to escape, she said, some of the "baggage" that came with being a member of the Redgrave theatrical dynasty in Britain .

Richardson is perhaps best known for her ferocious turn as Sally Bowles in the Roundabout Theater Company's dark production of Cabaret that ran on Broadway in 1999. She won a slew of awards and acclaim, including a Tony, but megastardom didn't exactly follow. On film, Richardson had memorable turns in The Parent Trap remake opposite a young Lindsay Lohan, in Nell, and in James Ivory's The White Countess. She continued to do stage work as well, appearing most recently in New York as Blanche in A Street Car Named Desire on Broadway, again with the Roundabout.

She met husband Liam Neeson while performing opposite him in a 1993 Broadway revival of Anna Christie, a "sizzling and electric... performance that made her a star in the United States."

In addition to Neeson, Richardson leaves behind her two sons, Micheal, 13, and Daniel, 12.

A few clips of Richardson at work:

The Parent Trap, 1998

Cabaret, 1999 (audio only)

Discussing the work of playwright Eugene O'Neill with Neeson

The Tony-award winning stage and film performer was taken off life support by her family this afternoon, the New York Post reported. Friends and family had gathered at Lenox Hill Hospital, where she had been taken following a skiing accident two days ago near Montreal.

Other media outlets, including CNN and the Daily News, cited a family statement reporting Richardson's death.

Richardson, a member of the Redgrave theatrical dynasty, is married to film star Liam Neeson. In addition to Neeson, she is survived by sons Micheal, 13, and Daniel, 12. The family statement said the sons were "shocked and devastated by the loss."

At Richardson's bedside over the past day were her mother Vanessa Redgrave, aunt Lynn Redgrave, sister Joely Richardson and ex-husband Robert Fox. Among those paying their respects have been actress Meryl Streep, author Joan Didion and actress Lauren Bacall.

For a look at Richardson's life and career, see Richard Lawson's Natasha Richardson, 1963-2009: In Memoriam.

Richardson's eventually-fatal accident came Monday. While taking a beginner's skiing lesson at Mont Tremblant in Quebec, north of Montreal, Richardson fell in what was later described as a patch of snow. She had not been wearing a helmet, but initially shook off the fall, according to news reports. About an hour later, Richardson complained of a severe headache and was taken to a Montreal hospital.

According to the Daily News, "Experts said she exhibited the classic symptoms of a epidural hematoma, or bleeding between the brain and the skull."

It used to be that a gig at the Times was a life-long, perk-filled sinecure. These days all it gets you is a guaranteed wedding announcement and a timely obit. Robert J. Cole, a former business reporter for the paper who was judged "one of the dozen most influential business journalists of the 1980s" by his peers, didn't even get that. He died of a heart attack on February 11, but his obituary didn't make it into the paper until today, a full month later. (And he probably hated it when his stories sat on some editor's desk for a month!)

Cole isn't the only poor soul who recently got stuck in a long layover at the Times' obit desk. B-movie auteur Ray Dennis Stickler also had to wait a month after his January 7 passing before the Times saw fit sum up his life in 1,000 words, which ticked off his fans. Come on obit desk! News about dead people is still news!

Brady, who died Monday in his Manhattan home, clearly found the job a cinch after working as Rupert Murdoch's lieutenant and heading up several other publications.

Brady was editor of Murdoch's Star supermarket tabloid; before that, he was editor and publisher of both Women's Wear Daily and Harper's Bazaar. He would go on to succeed Clay Felker atop New York. "Notoriously stubborn, he couldn't avoid the feuds and squabbles that went with ambition," People wrote Brady's period as a publishing executive.

Switching back into writing, the Korean War veteran started and wrote New York Post's Page Six. He would later write for a weekly column for Advertising Age and Crain's New York Business, contribute to Forbes.com and, for many years, write the "In Step With" column for Sunday newspaper supplement Parade.

Brady earned Emmy nominations for his TV adventures, which included live celebrity interviews on behalf of WCBS and CNBC. He also wrote five novels.

Brady's marriage to Florence Kelly Brady "fell apart gradually over the years," according to People, and Brady lived alone as a bachelor.

The cause of his death was not included in a press release issued by Parade.

Brady is survived by Florence, to whom he remained married at the time of his death; two daughters; four grandchildren and the modern celebrity-industrial complex he was instrumental in creating. The next time you are entertained (or shocked, annoyed or bored) by a celebrity tidbit, take a moment to give thanks in his memory.

(Picture via Ad Age)

Our source was first approached this week by NBC for what a producer called a "feature" on Jobs, but later admitted was an advance obituary. Then a CBS news producer called and also requested an interview on Jobs that when pressed, they admitted too was also an advance obituary for the ailing Jobs.

Newspapers and wire services prepare obituaries far in advance that can sometimes sit on the shelves for years. Sometimes it can lead to embarrassment, such as when Bloomberg News inadvertently released a canned obituary for Jobs. And while TV news operations are quick to prepare packages of archival footage if they so much as hear a famous person is ailing, actually taping interviews for those packages is more difficult. Even if news producers can find people willing to talk about someone as if he were dead on camera, it's expensive to send out camera crews to gather footage that might go stale.

Jobs, who is on a six-month medical leave, has said he expects to return to work after dealing with a medical problem he first characterized as a "hormonal imbalance," but later admitted was more complex. In 2003, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and underwent surgery to treat it in 2004; most observers believe his present problems stem from aftereffects of the surgery, which likely involved a Whipple procedure, a rewiring of the digestive tract akin to a gastric bypass.

Is Jobs dying? No major TV network has reported that. But those same networks' producers must believe it is likely enough to roll their cameras.

(Photo by Gizmodo)

There were plenty of similarly nasty, bile-filled remembrances of the executive, following his death earlier this month from cancer, on the Yahoo Finance message board for JRC. "Ding-dong, the witch is dead," read one. " Another: "The guy was an @#$% on Tuesday, when he was still alive. He was an @#$% on Wednesday, when he died. And he is still an @#$% right now."

But the memorials that besmirched Jelenic's memory the most were the ones about how he was an awful person.

Jelenic's notoriety was fairly well established before he died. His company owned a chain of community newspapers — generally not well regarded — in the Northeast. The stock now trades at half a cent as the company struggles with heavy debt due to acquisitions.

Forbes profiled him under the headline, "Cheapskate Journalism," adding that "nobody cinches the belt tighter" and recalling how one large corporation refused to sell a group of newspapers to Jelenic, even though his was the highest bid by a significant margin.

Jelenic also lashed out at an American Journalism Review writer, pelting her with insults. "Flashes of his ego and temper are almost immediately on display," she wrote. "The interview lasts nearly two hours, and Jelenic appears to hate every question."

On Yahoo, this portrait of a small, angry man was fleshed out:

A call on the board for a modicum of respect, for the benefit of Jelenic's family, was rejected. Disgruntled former employees said the former CEO's loved ones should be faring far better than the families of those he laid off, fired, or put in peril through terrible business decisions. Fortunately, talk of bitter employees at the funeral, unloading their hatred on mourners, apparently did not come to pass.

Firing a ton of people to achieve 35 percent margins is probably not, even among salty newspaper types, and even on anonymous message boards, enough to stir this sort of public grave-dancing. But doing so while being a tremendous jerk about it apparently is. Moguls be warned.

A straight-A high school student and graduate of Vanderbilt University, Page worked stints as a teacher, secretary, fur coat model and stage and television actress before a police officer and pinup photographer discovered her on the beach at Coney Island in 1950. She soon moved on to racy S&M-themed photos with a brother-sister team team who "cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature." The photos became the subject of a congressional investigation and, page said, led to harassment by federal agents.

Page posed in a Christmas-themed Playboy centerfold in 1955 (image NSFW). Heffner told AP Page "had a tremendous impact on our society... an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion."

Soon after, she became depressed, and two marriages in quick succession ended in divorce. Page was diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent to a mental hospital. She later had a religious conversion. After living for years on Social Security benefits, Page benefited from an image revival the Times described thusly:

David Stevens, creator of the comic-book and later movie character the Rocketeer, immortalized her as the Rocketeer’s girlfriend. Fashion designers revived her look. Uma Thurman, in bangs, reincarnated Bettie in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” and Demi Moore, Madonna and others appeared in Page-like photos.

There were Bettie Page playing cards, lunch boxes, action figures, T-shirts and beach towels. Her saucy images went up in nightclubs. Bettie Page fan clubs sprang up. Look-alike contests, featuring leather-and-lace and kitten-with-a-whip Betties, were organized

Page also came to be worshipped on the internet. Fan sites widely circulated old pictures, typified by those below, which mix racy S&M shots with tamer beach-and-bikini material. These pictures give a sampling of the sort of pictures that were, according to AP, " quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years."

Later in life, Page refused to be photographed, saying she wanted to be remembered as she had looked in her heyday.

The next time you see a naked picture on the internet, or some good bondage porn, think of Bettie Page. She specifically requested it! In addition to making it all possible. (So hot!)

• Wintour famously passed on the chance to cooperate with the launch of Project Runway four years ago; by September Runway partner Elle was well on its way to passing Vogue in total ad pages, growing while Wintour's magazine was shrinking.
• Vogue's belated (but semi-successful!) reality show response, Model.Live, was masterminded by worried Vogue publisher Tom Florio, not Wintour.
• Those hussies at Elle launched their own cable show imitating an imitation of an imitation of Wintour. And she's not even getting royalties and whatnot!
• Vogue this year was beset by a series of ill-advised covers.
• Wintour was publicly snubbed in Europe for being an arrogant cultural imperialist.
• Men's Vogue fell in the Great Magazine Die-Off and, according to Page Six, Wintour didn't even have the energy to mount a vicious internal turf war. Sad!

Worst of all, the Times not two months ago profiled one of the bevy of smart young Euroskanks angling to push Wintour out the door (an elegant Russian with a Ph.D.), so when Wintour goes to recommend a replacement to Conde Nast boss Si Newhouse, as Page Six said she plans to do, he might just ignore her and go off in his own direction. (Maybe the editor of sexy Vogue India?)

Vogue's people deny everything, but leaving the magazine makes so much sense for Wintour: She gets to exit while the magazine is still on top; she doesn't have to learn how to effectively publish on this cesspool they call the internet; and Wintour will finally have time to close the deal on one of her many crushes. If the editor hasn't considered these positive aspects of retirement, she ought to, because someone at Conde Nast thinks she should!

• It was too late to have a new tone: Radar's tone is wry, arch, post-modern, skeptical, and, you know "snarky" (*retch*). Had the magazine launched five or ten years before it did, it would have been a lone, intelligent voice amongst the wilderness of celebrity coverage. As it was, it was just one more magazine with the same tone that hundreds and hundreds of blogs had made into the default voice of the entire young American audience. Radar was never bad—it just wasn't fresh.
• It was too late to start a standalone magazine: There are plenty of people who dream of starting their own magazines. Few make it happen. Roshan did,somehow, but he missed the era when it would have been a viable enterprise. What was the last great standalone magazine to launch, and be successful? Wired, in 1993? And Wired is still around because it now has the money of Conde Nast to back it up. The day of launching new, large-scale, general-interest print magazines (rather than super-niche ones) that turn a profit are gone. Technology will determine the future of publishing, but that's not it.
• It was too late to own its category: Celebrity coverage with a twist. Smart celebrity coverage. For people who are actually intelligent, but have a pop culture habit. This is a niche with no space left in it. It is a niche that was filled before Radar got a chance to get to it. Radar didn't lack talent—it lacked a compelling reason to exist. That Maer Roshan got three cracks at it is a testament to his otherworldly skills as a salesman.

From Lipsky's remarks to staff, excerpted in "Ideal Of The Scoop:"

[Closure] was always a risk, and all the greater is the heroism of our financial backers. Even at the end they were offering millions of dollars if we could find the partners we needed. I don't mind saying to you, as I have to them, that I very much regret - I will always regret - that we were not able to return to them the capital that they invested in us...

They invested in the ideal of the scoop, the notion that news is the spirit of democracy, and in the principles for which we have stood in our editorial pages - limited and honest government, equality under our Constitution and the law, free markets, sound money, and a strong foreign policy in support of freedom and democracy...

It is in the nature of things that there are going to be some jeers as we go out, as there were when we came in. Do not be discouraged by this... All of you will be able to tell your children and your grandchildren or simply your friends that not only did you appear in arms in a great newspaper war but that you did so on your own terms, for principles you believed in...

From "Picking Up The Flag Of The Sun:"

When the paper was launched, a reporter of the Washington Post had asked its editor, Seth Lipsky, how the Sun would be able to compete against the New York Times, which had "eighty reporters" on its metropolitan desk. The Times might have 80 reporters, he replied, but they missed the story that taxes are too high, that the reason there is an apartment shortage is rent control, and that vouchers are a movement to rescue minority children from failing schools...

on April 16, 2002, the first issue of the newspaper hit the streets, 18 pages priced at 50 cents. The lead story was an interview with Ahmad Chalabi, identified as "the leader of the free, democratic Iraqi opposition." Mr. Chalabi warned that the Bush administration's planning for a post-invasion Iraq was "abysmal."

The interview, a major scoop, was often cited by those who suggested the Sun was an uncritical supporter of the decision to go to ground in Iraq...

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Sun's California-based national correspondent, Josh Gerstein, was stopped by security at an event and asked which newspaper he worked for. When he explained, the police phoned the newspaper and reached a receptionist, who, when asked whether the paper had a California bureau, responded no. Mr. Gerstein was promptly arrested and held for some hours until the confusion was sorted out, him no worse for the wear.

From the editorial "The Arc Of The Sun:"

The Bush tax cuts did unleash tremendous economic growth. Iraqis are building a better country in freedom. The expansion of charter schools in New York has improved educational outcomes. The Republican Party can nominate a presidential candidate who stands for welcoming immigrants to America...

We wouldn't want to overstate our accomplishments. We failed to make a profit, which was one of our goals. But neither would we want to understate our accomplishments. It is not nothing that when the Washington Post and the New York Times wanted to report on Arab oil money and monarchs funding the Clinton library, they quoted reporting by our Josh Gerstein. Or when the Wall Street Journal editorial page wanted to understand the roots of the financial crisis, it cited reporting by our Julie Satow.

Or that when President Bush nominated Michael Mukasey as attorney general after we suggested it in a New York Sun editorial, the White House quoted the front-page profile of the judge that had been written in the Sun by our Joseph Goldstein on the moment of his retirement...

We can only hope that some day in the future our own record will inspire some new generation of newspapermen and women with dreams to pick up the flag that today we put down. We hope it doesn't take 50 years for the next new start, but even if it does take that long, we hope that they have as much fun as we have had and meet with as much success.

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.

Retraction:

Story Referencing Apple Was Sent in Error by Bloomberg News

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — 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.

—Editor: Joe Winski, Cesca Antonelli

Steve Jobs obituary:

JOB, STEVE. APPLE FOUNDER, TECH VISIONARY. UPDATED AUGUST 2008



HOLD FOR RELEASE - DO NOT USE - HOLD FOR RELEASE - DO NOT USE



Steve Jobs's birthday: Feb. 24, 1955

BIO UPDATED AS OF 2008, by Connie Guglielmo



APPLE PR CONTACTS: Katie Cotton — -redacted- and Steve Dowling: -redacted- or -redacted-

People to contact for comment:

- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: -redacted-

- Jon Rubinstein, former head of Apple's iPod division. He's now

chairman at Palm. Contact Lynn Fox in PR.

- Heidi Roizen: venture capitalist who once dated Jobs: -redacted- or -redacted-. Heidi knows a lot of Silicon



Valley insiders and may put us in touch with others, including

A.C. Mike Markkula, the first VC to back Apple.

- Larry Ellison of Oracle (one of his best friends); contact

Deborah Hellinger in Oracle PR. -redacted-, -redacted-



- Jerry Brown (personal friend) and California AG. Try GARETH

LACY at -redacted- IN OAKLAND; -redacted- CELL, -redacted- or press office: -redacted-



- Al Gore: member of Apple's board of directors

- Bill Gates: Microsoft was among the first developers of Mac

software

- Bob Iger at Disney: who bought Pixar from Jobs

- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and member of Apple's board. Send

note to -redacted- or try David Krane: -redacted- or -redacted-



- Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel Corp. (Apple began using Intel

chips in its Macs in 2006). Contact Tom Beermann: -redacted- or

Bill Calder on -redacted-. Both in Intel PR

- Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Contact Shawn

Dainas in PR: -redacted-

- John Lassiter and Ed Catmull: Pixar-nee-Disney executives. Try

Zenia Mucha, -redacted- or Jonathan Friedland, -redacted-, in

corporate PR at Disney.

- Guy Kawasaki, one of the first Apple evangelists. -redacted- or -redacted-



- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, who bought an early circuit

board for the game Breakout from Jobs and Wozniak. (pr is being

handled by his daughter, Alisa Bushnell. her cell is: -redacted-; work is -redacted- work/message;-redacted-)

To contact the reporter on this story:

Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at-redacted- or -redacted-



To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Cesca Antonelli at -redacted- or -redacted-



AAPL US <Equity> CN

MSFT US <Equity> CN

DIS US <Equity> CN



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