UPDATE, 3:25 pm: The LA Times has confirmed Jackson's death.

The Times is still saying that Michael Jackson has only been hospitalized, but TMZ's claiming he's officially dead. (As Ezra points out below, it'd be good to get some official confirmation on this from somebody that's not TMZ.)

Kind of weirdly, and kind of naturally, the Mercury offices are unexpectedly affected by the news. Everyone's kind of in shock. Patrick Coleman's muttering "I don't know what to do...", and I can't tell if he's being genuine or ironic, and Matt Davis, who was on a donut run at Voodoo when the TMZ story went up, called me to tell me the news. "Did you know Michael Jackson just died?" he said. "The owner of Voodoo just turned the music down and yelled it throughout the shop."

I'm just gonna spend the rest of the day here, if that's cool with everybody.