Gazette headline on land misses the mark

I have learned that most of the time my agitation about the slant of a news story results from the headline or photo caption rather than the content of the story. This was the case with the Dec. 17 Gazette headline: “Chilling numbers - Farmland values fall in Iowa for first time since 1999.”

I think this emphasis is wrong and misses the main news impact. The big news to me is that farm values have proven to be immune from the huge collapse of value in other investments. Can you imagine a headline “Stock values collapse, down by an average of 2.2 percent over past year”?

I think the Register's treatment “Farmland prices' 9-year rise ends but 2 percent decline is smaller than economists had expected” does a better job of encapsulating the underlying facts.

W.R. Shuttleworth

Cedar Rapids