"Inartful Lede of the Day" award goes to KGW.com

We all the news business is in a rough spot these days. Layoffs mount at every turn, editors grow more and more frantic as they feel the hot breath of the corporate bean counters on the back of their neck, and the second-grader-on-crack attention span of the viewing public has turned every newscast into a police blotter with five minutes for weather.

That being said, however, my attention today was drawn to the remarkably hamfisted opening to a local news story turned in by one Erica Heartquist of KGW News in Portland. The story itself was simple: a local man had a heart attack, and his large, 150-pound dog decided to take out his grief by attempting to separate a neighbor from her arm. Simple story. And, pretty sad. How did KGW choose to describe these events, you ask? Witness:

A large dog attacked a Southeast Portland woman over the weekend and the dog’s owner had no way of stopping him because he was dead.

Almost breathtaking in its pull-no-punches simplicity, no?