Misleading Headline Creates Confusion

Tuesday's issue of the Missourian ran a story on 8A about how the hurricane affected those in Columbia. It was composed very well. It flowed smoothly from paragraph to paragraph, an excellent example being between grafs 4, 5 and 6. (Graf 4 ended by introducing water damage, graf 5 had a quote about flooding and electricity damage and graf 6 was about Boone Electric Cooperative.) Immediately following this, the reporter talked about MU students who had family in the area. There was then a rough transition between that and increasing gas prices. All of this is acceptable, but I didn't think so at first. The reason I thought the story was incredibly disconnected and downright bad was that the headline captured only the first third of the article. The headline read, "Columbia workers to help in storm area," but the first graf, which was clearly supposed to be the nut, was this: "Even though the Gulf Coast communicaties most affected by Hurricane Katrina are hundreds of miles away, the storm's effects are hitting home for many in Columbia." Perhaps some or most of the blame lies in my misinterpretation of that paragraph, but I had a different expectation for the story from the headline. I've never realized before exactly what kind of an impact a headline can have.