25 August 2011 | The Living Obit

My gig here at Eroico is to write about the media, those hapless turds who are like infants with a new toy: fascinated endlessly when something shiny is right before their eyes, but becomes nonexistent when it passes out of view. 

I also write about the media and its coverage of the Middle East, so it's something a little different for me to shift focus to the techie world, which is usually handled by one of my co-bloggers, Robbie Gutierrez, who writes the InSitu column. But we decided that a comment about the media's coverage of Steve Jobs' resignation from Apple was ripe (get it?) for criticism. 

What we had yesterday was what I call "the living obit." It should be no secret that obits of very famous people are written long before an individual's actual demise in order to be timely. But when you have a very famous person like Steve Jobs with known medical issues, you treat any news like stepping down as CEO as the equivalent of an obit. 

Just peruse major outlets like the New York Times or the Washington Post: the resignation of Jobs was a front and center spotlight, above the Web page fold, so to speak. Not just one article, not just two, but several reverential "look backs" at his career, with a tone usually accompanying a corpse. The tech blogs followed suit of course, as you might expect, but one was more blatant than the others: Engadget ran a picture of an empty onstage sofa, the one used when Jobs introduced the first iPad just over a year ago. Message: the ghost has been given up. 

Watching all these stories appear and in the same manner, underscores how our Media Glitterati creates a narrative and influences opinion. It made me think: what will happen when he actually passes away? What I've been seeing since  yesterday is a living obit, a eulogy before the fact. It also makes investors panic (as they usually do on a daily basis) by overly hyping up what is actually a routine practice, a CEO stepping down and a new one assuming the mantle. Of course, Jobs is no ordinary CEO, but that just underscores my point. When you are a favorite of our Media Glitterati, they will do everything to carry on the impression they've built around you. I certainly don't remember this type of coverage when Bill Gates left the Microsoft building. Apples and oranges maybe, but the hype feeds itself to the degree that we're seeing now for some, not so much for others.

But, no matter. Our Media Glitterati is ultimately a fickle beast, and attention will be pulled in some other direction and the Jobs living obit will recede. That's just the way it is.