People Magazine Publishes Obituary for Not-Dead Kirk Douglas
People Magazine published a premature obituary for actor Kirk Douglas that was quickly circulated on social media Sunday night.
The piece — with the telling headline “DO NOT PUB Kirk Douglas Dies’’ — is a mostly fitting tribute to the American screen legend, though some details were conspicuously absent:
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“Kirk Douglas, one of the few genuine box-office names to emerge just as TV was overtaking American culture in the years right after World War II, died TK TK TK,’’ it reads, employing the common journalism shorthand for “to come.’’ “He was 97 (DOB 12/9/1916) and had been in good health despite having suffered a debilitating 1996 stroke that rendered his speech difficult.’’
It’s not clear how the article — dated with a timestamp of Sept. 29, 2014 — suddenly caught the attention of social media. A screenshot of the obituary was circulating on Twitter for over two hours before the piece was removed from the site around 9:10 p.m. (Update:[fragment number=1] Now it’s gone there, too).
Preparing obituaries for notable personalities before they die is a time-honored journalistic tradition — it allows news organizations to act quickly, whenever the regrettable news breaks. The trick, of course, is to wait until the news breaks.
You can read the full article via a screenshot obtained by Boston.com.
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