Our Newspaper Stand

Student publication at UMass Boston has had a long and distinguished history of putting out journals, publications, zines, magazines, and newspapers. But this would not have been possible without a network of carefully placed, maintained, and stocked newspaper stands in communal areas. And while much may have changed since the 1970s when students began publishing their literature at UMass, for the last 20 or so years there has been one essential, but under-recognized, constant. 

The newspaper stands themselves. 

There are by my counts around 12 of them on campus today in 2026, the bulk concentrated in University Hall and Campus center. They exist to distribute the biweekly student paper now, but as recently as 2023 they had a dual purpose of distributing the schools official publications, the Watermark (the fiction journal) and Writ Large (the non-fiction journal). Sadly, around 2022-2023, both of these journals would stop publishing under those names despite University websites listing them as active. And while the MFA runs a journal under the name The Breakwater Review, and it does not do print issues. It has always, to my knowledge, released issues digitally, meaning that for some years now our campus newspaper stands have been without a non-news publication offering for the thousands of students who frequent campus spaces. 

In truth though, some newspaper stands have been dormant of any publication for years now, such as the one below. 

This is an abandoned Mass Media newspaper stand on the 6th floor of Wheatley hall sat, forgotten, between at least 2023-2026. In 2023, when I returned to finish my undergrad degree, I found several lonely copies on top of it of Volume #34 of The Watermark. When I came back in 2025 for a Masters, those copies were gone, and the newspaper stand was still there, abandoned. 

It would sit like that until late April of 2026, when after securing its use from both the English Department and the Mass Media, 10 copies of Issue #1 of Triptych were placed there and were all taken before the campus went on hiatus until the fall. 

And while some things may have changed (at some point someone did steal the grey-ish tan  bucket we were using!) The newspaper stand remains. Triptych is proud to inherit the legacy of student publications here at UMass, and reactivate dormant infrastructure in pursuit of putting good stories into people's hands. While some publications have gone digital only, Triptych is committed to print runs of books, no matter how small they may be.

Sadly, in January 2027 we will lose access to this newspaper stand due to the fact that the vast majority of the staff will no longer be students, and the journal will continue fully independent of the UMB environment.