State Media

So let's review: First, as editor of Portland Press Herald, Jeannine Guttman supervises soft, superficial, spotty and error-prone coverage of the Allen-Collins race--coverage that seems, almost invariably, to tilt toward Sen. Collins.

She never runs profiles of the candidates, and even allows the publication of a Collins endorsement that side-steps literally all the major issues in the race.

Then eight months later she goes to work for Collins.

Did I mention that the editor of Bangor Daily News, the state's only other large newspaper, is also a former Collins staffer? (And so is his wife.)

A paranoid guy like me starts to wonder if there's some sort of pattern here.

But seriously folks: Unseemly doesn't begin to describe it.

We're talking about a blurring-beyond-recognition of the line between the Maine media and the Maine political establishment. We're talking about institutions that are compromised not just at the margins, but in ways that raise questions about their core missions.

Very ugly. And a serious problem.

(A call to Guttman for comment went unreturned.)