Wow, according to Wikipedia he died of suicide by two to the head. And here I thought stories of suicide via two self-inflicted head shots was a myth restricted to conspiracy theorists.

Even if it was a legit suicide, there's a reason the movie is called "Kill the Messenger". It's shameful how much other journalists focused on him rather than what he was reporting, and even worse since he was right.

The capital of the world's sixth largest economy uses a coroner and not a medical examiner? For reference, a medical examiner is a forensic pathologist, and generally one with a forensic fellowship. A coroner is anybody with a pulse, either elected or appointed.

That said, it looks like the Sacramento coroner does in fact employ at least one forensic pathologist, so that lends a little more credence to the finding. Also, in these high profile cases there are often quite a few witnesses to the autopsy, which makes it more difficult to squash evidence.

And, yes, there are plenty of stories of people surviving a gunshot wound to the head, even remaining conscious.

Not every head gunshot wound is fatal or incapacitating. The WP entry should have a few links to studies where they find a small amount of suicides require multiple shots to work.

It does: it links to the "multiple gunshot suicide" page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_gunshot_suicide