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This is a post I probably could have written last semester, or even last year, but alas, I do not obsess over the Tribune, generally speaking, and the opportunity cost of making a blog post about my thoughts on the Tribune outweighs the opportunity cost of, say, organizing my socks drawer, no offense.

However, Dr. McAdams has a truly splendid post from yesterday about the Tribune “Mimicking Warrior Stories”:

The current issue of The Marquette Tribune has a column titled “Confessions of a 21-year-old Karaoke King” written by Rob Ebert.

It’s a nice little piece of writing.

But interestingly, The Warrior ran a piece virtually identical in tone, writing style and substance back on 27 September 2006.

This one was written by Kyle Shamorian.

This is not the first time in the last few weeks that the Tribune has followed in the footsteps of The Warrior.

The February 15 number of the Tribune had a front-page, above the fold feature story on Marine Corporal Dave Warnacut, a Marquette senior who served in Iraq in late 2004 and early 2005.

Yet The Warrior ran a similar feature story on Warnacut back in November, 2005.

No one can deny that the Tribune has had an interesting case of following similar stories to that of The Warrior a number of times since The Warrior came to Marquette. The items that Dr. McAdams points out are part of a series of news items brought to the forefront of student interest either by The Warrior or conservatives generally.

See, for instance, the eminently predictable story, first brought to the forefront by our own Daniel Suhr of GOP3.com and further investigated by Dr. McAdams, about Marquette’s decision to change vendors from Altera to Stone Creek on the basis of donor threats by the father of a locally-owned coffee producer.

We began to blog on that story in early August, and what do you know, the Tribune’s top of the fold story to lead off the academic year in late August dealt with the vendor story as well. Even if one does not take this to mean that the Tribune has eclectic news gathering procedures, as several Tribune leaders have insinuated we suggest, it says volumes about news information on campus.

The Tribune, like the Mainstream Media, does not usually or even frequently gather news ideas from an independent source like The Warrior or conservatve blogs like McAdams and ours. However, it is practically undeniable that over the past couple years, non-University sanctioned news agents are driving much of the campus debate.

The very format of the Tribune, as Dr. McAdams has pointed out several times, has changed considerably over the past few years, at least since I’ve been to Marquette. The changes have been positive - not as much of the flare and “if we all work together, we can make this the best yearbook ever!” element as once existed on the front page.

(I completely stole that line from Jonah Goldberg, by the way.)

This year, at least, the Tribune has done laudable work, including some fierce criticism of University decision making - an arbitrary process that involves students only as window dressing for entrenched bureaucratic interests. On the whole, I think the shift on a campus dragged kicking and screaming towards greater openness has been positive.

I don’t expect, however, that suddenly University bureaucrats or even monopoly interests in the College of Communications to suddenly come around to the idea of diversity in media.

Other Trib Items

I have two other items to comment upon. First, several Tribbers recently floated around a rumor that The Warrior was planning an expose on the paper. I was considering playing up the rumor but never did anything about it. It reminded me of the “CR’s are planning to protest Brokeback Mountain” and “CR’s are planning to petition Archbishop Dolan to ask Fr. Wild remove GSA from campus” rumors.

Second, I saw the news item from the other day about former Tribune Managing Editor Jackie Palank recieving an award/internship with The New York Times. While it is always encouraging to see Marquette students and alumni advance in the world, this award in particular is instructive. Palank is a well known campus liberal, as her internship with Rep. Gwen Moore this past fall demonstrates.

It’s fascinating as a college student to see the full liberal recruiting circle in action. Liberals practice their talent at the local level and, if they are hard-working or lucky, can move to the upper echelons of liberal activism. Palank is graduating from the minor leagues to the major leagues of the left. We’ll earnestly await NYT stories with her byline about American national security secrets!

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