On January 25th the Minnesota Daily published a letter to the editor from Abul-Rahman Magba-Kamara, chairman of the UMN College Republicans. The letter's a bit too long to post in the body here, but you can find the whole text below the fold or on the paper's site here. [..]
A week later on February 7th, The Winona Daily News published a letter to the editor from Samantha Gronlund, a Winona State University student. Again, the letter's a bit too long but the text is below the fold and can be found on the paper's site here.[..]
I think the sum total difference between the two paragraphs amounts to three insignificant changes... The startling thing is that they are virtually identical the whole way through and the thing's 10 paragraphs long! Seriously, I've included both below the fold, it's startling, but let me restate where we're at: Two papers published identical letters to the editor attacking Al Franken within a 2 week span but attributed to two entirely different individuals. The academic integrity of these two students is of serious question, but that's not my concern right now.
It's not surprising that someone else found this weird.
Apparently tipped off to this disturbing occurrence, The Winona Daily News published the following correction on Saturday the 9th[..]
According to Ms. Gronlund, the letter came from Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign and was a form letter.
Ooops! All the more reason to support Al Franken.
