Artifact #4: Founding Editor's Introduction to The Waterfront

Note: this is the editors introduction to Issue / Volume 1 of The Waterfront, the successor publication to UMass Boston's Writ Large and Watermark publications. I had access, temporarily, to one copy in January of 2026 and took a photo of the page with the introduction in it, and excerpted it here. Note you can find a questionnaire with Katrina here. 

The Waterfront is the synthesis of two previous publications at UMass Boston: Writ Large and The Watermark. The decision to fuse two publications into one was made largely by the Editor-in-Chief of The Mass Media, Katrina Sanville...I know that this decision was motivated by a perceived lack of student interest. Submissions for Writ Large were low, and many of them not formatted as an op-ed. The Watermark had many submissions, but many were from the same couple students. To an outsider, it  seemed like few students wanted to publish their work. My takeaway from this merger is this: Student voices matter. If it seems like students don’t want to contribute to the magazine, that directly influences the magazine. If it seems that students need the magazine, that directly influences  the magazine...You prove that we need the magazine.

–Riley Hammond, Founding Editor-in-Chief Waterfront, former Editor-in-Chief Writ Large