Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones is alive, to the best of our knowledge, as of this posting.

Greg Mitchell author of a book about the media titled “So Wrong For So Long” wrote on E&P:

Leading news outlets reported today that Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Democratic congresswoman, had died — when she was still alive though in critical condition. The outlets included her hometown Cleveland Plain Dealer, The New York Times, CBS News, Fox News, The Associated Press, Bloomberg and many others.

The early afternoon AP dispatch declared: “Pioneering Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones died Wednesday afternoon after suffering a brain aneurysm while driving on Tuesday evening, Fox News has confirmed.

“According to sources on Capitol Hill, she was removed from life support at 12:19 p.m. at Huron Road Hospital in Cleveland.”

The New York Times headline on the Web announced: “Ohio Congresswoman Dies.”

Wow. Hope this doesn’t get out. Could look bad for the press.

That nice Jim O’Shea is gone from the LA Times, after what seems like only a few months. Quiet guy, kept to himself. The paper said so:

For the past few weeks, there has been a lot of internal Times gossip about O’Shea’s seeming distance from the newsroom operation. Basically, some people thought he wasn’t there even when he was there.

O’Shea had been in the top job for only 15 months, and was fired for resisting more of those budget cuts, just like his predecessor, Dean Baquet. While these proposed cuts weren’t as drastic as the previous, only about $4 million, out of a budget of $120 million, David Hiller canned O’Shea for his reluctance. O’Shea was said to have concerns about the paper’s ability to cover both the presidential election and the Beijing Olympics.

Spring Streetologists will note that this the fourth departure of a high ranking editor or publisher in three years.

Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, notes how closely this follows The Wire.