While the news business is shedding its old skin, a new hybrid has emerged: It’s Examiner.com, part of the vast array of assets in media, entertainment, and energy owned by billionaire Philip Anshutz. It has become the exemplar of what has come to be called micropolar journalism, as the industry leader in creating local content, with more than 17,000 contributors in more than 100 U.S. cities, and 18 million a month. But they insist they’re not journalists, so what gives?

In today’s cutthroat media environment, stories break fast and spoil faster. It doesn’t take long to go from big news to scraps of news to contrary opinions that seem cooked up for shock value. News Decay charts the strange and rapid declines wrought by the 24-hour news cycle.

News reporters like to catch readers’ attention with a few zingy lines at the start of an article. Sometimes, these so-called “ledes” go horribly wrong. In Today’s Worst News Ledes, we highlight some of the biggest offenders: