Maroon Considering Reporting News

By David North

Oct. 23, 2015

A recent decision by editors of The Maroon, a “newspaper publisher” (sic) on campus, has moved the paper in a journalistic direction. The vote only nearly passed among staffers for the paper. The latest issue will now contain “news, or something”.

The Maroon finally became aware of its dwindling importance when members saw the copious stacks of untouched issues laying in the waste disposal outside of the Arley D. Cathey dining hall. Upon this revelation, a meeting was called in order to maintain what little dignity the publication still had.

“It was a tough vote,” says copy editor Charles Stroum, “and not everyone is happy about it. The Maroon hasn’t reported news for over 100 years. We aren’t sure how our readers will respond. They have never really relied on us to report factual information. We’ve built a strong reputation for being useless.”

An avid reader of The Maroon, Amber Galloway, expressed her concern, “What made the Maroon amazing was that no one read it. You could literally write anything and The Maroon would publish it. I read an op-ed one time about a guy who felt a little sick one day. Not sick enough to go to the hospital, but just enough for it to be annoying, you know? I mean not even The South Side Weekly would publish something like that. But if The Maroon starts reporting news, then people might begin to care about it and they’d have to actually edit their articles.”

A recent campus-wide poll to determine the impact The Maroon has on students shows that “7% read the paper weekly, 26% quarterly, 15% occasionally, and 52% use it to fix wobbly chairs/desks, clean up their dining table, paper mache, etc.”

Third year student, Malik Eberly, adds, “Yeah of course I’ve heard of The Maroon. Hasn’t everyone? How else would I know that we have a football team if it weren’t for The Maroon?” Eberly then candidly spoke, “We do have a football team, don’t we?”

Another poll, conducted by the Statistics Club, asked the question: “Who do you trust more? Yik Yak or The Maroon?” A staggering 89% responded “Yik Yak”, 9% abstained from voting with the minority being staffers of the paper who constituted the last 2%.