Steve Yelvington, one of the most sage old media-to-new media archetypes, writes about last week's accidental transmission of Steve Jobs' obituary across Bloomberg's wire service. But he raises an interesting notion: Is it time to kill the obituary entirely?
Of course, he's not suggesting that media don't chronicle a life lived. People love to read about someone's life --- on our Web site, obits are usually in the Top 10 or 20 traffic spots daily, and breaking news stories on deaths of public figures or prominent local figures draw significant attention. Obituaries are often some of the most compelling narratives in the news.
Instead, what Yelvington is suggesting is that news media open their clipping files and create the equivalent of Wikipedia entries on the living.
