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.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XVJBleN7L7o%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1%26rel%3D0

With honor and distinction, Erik Henriksen served as the executive editor of the Portland Mercury from 2004 to 2020. He can now be found at henriksenactual.com.

9 replies on “The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.”

  2. Work has stopped utterly in my office. Not a single person is doing their job. Everyone is trying to verify this death.
    Kinda scary.

  4. Everyone’s beating on the TMZ, despite the fact that they also were 30 minutes ahead of everyone else on the heart attack itself. I guess that didn’t buy them any cred on the second part of the story, which they also had 30 minutes before anyone else.

    (Not that I love having to defend TMZ. But fair is fair. They beat everyone, *twice*, and no one will cred them for it.)

  6. @ The One True b!X: I don’t think anyone’s denying TMZ had the story before anyone else–they’re just acknowledging that, even if they were right on this one, TMZ isn’t always a trustworthy source.

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