The Bay Area Reporter's "No obits" cover from August 13, 1998 is probably our most famous. We continue to get inquiries about it 23 years later.
The backstory: Our news editor at the time, Mike Salinas, was surprised as the week went on and no one had submitted an obituary.
Usually, by this time in the AIDS epidemic, we would have several. He then assigned reporter Timothy Rodrigues to write about it.
As Rodrigues recounted in a 2018 Guest Opinion piece on the 20th anniversary of the story, he had just been diagnosed with HIV himself.