Maine Media Watch's Worst Headline of the Month winners.

While there are failures of modern journalism everywhere, every month a few practitioners of the craft in Maine reach new lows in headline writing, reportage, editorializing, and other duties of the 4th Estate. Let's examine two of these anti-paragons, in hopes that a little sunshine will help clear the miasma from certain brains.....

Worst Headline of the Month: the headline writer at the Belfast Republican Journal.

"Sears Island one of seven choices for wildlife refuge" the headline on an article by Tanya Mitchell asserts.
Ah but it just ain't so. The National Wildlife Refuge manager in Maine is seeking new headquarters for the Maine Coastal Islands NWR. If Sears Island were selected, the Refuge would bulldoze, blast and pave part of the island for its office and parking lot. But it would not designate a single square inch as a protected refuge. The story's writer got it right, although she did commit the reporterial sin of announcing an important public meeting but then leaving out the location. ("in Searsport") Um..... where in Searsport? Sears Island meetings have been held in at least three different locations in that town.

Worst of the Month Runner up. Headline writer for the BDN

Michaud: No health care forum

Aug 19, 2009 09:48 pm | By Kevin Miller BDN Staff

What!? Representative Michaud is not going to hold a forum on the reorganizing of American healthcare? Of course he is. What the headline writer left out was that the representative declined to hold a "joint" health care forum that would have been co-led by an unannounced candidate for the opposing political party.

Well, duh...What authority does the bloke have for being entitled to co-chair? Maybe he should actually declare for the position and go through the official paperwork before tainting our noosphere with his ambitions