An Incomplete Financial Reconstruction

I have, to the best of my ability without funding, complete records, or official institutional support, tried to reconstruct to the best of my ability how funding worked at The Watermark. I have done this without assistance or input from the English department, campus offices or Undergrad / Grad Student Government collaboration. In fact, neither the Undergrad or Grad Student Governments responded to my repeated emails. The generic email for Student Activities did not ever respond to any of my outreach attempts. Named individuals in various branches of departments, admin offices, and even archives did respond, but only in the negative. This record is not incomplete by my design, but is made with the only information I had available to me by anecdotal testimony from former editors, unofficial conversations that were pushed into existence by the fact that my Public Records Request was denied. However, should the university wish to respond in an official capacity, I will gladly correct the record. 

All the information compiled here from Mass Media articles was publicly available and existed since drafts 1-4 as one coherent narrative, on official Mass Media articles and websites, and is available for free corroboration on the internet or via hard copies of the cited texts. All of the information from Watermark journals is available either in hard copies, digital copies on ScholarWorks or on The Internet Archive.

This section, must as a result, be taken with an extreme grain of salt. While I am willing to stand by my data, the data is admittedly incomplete.  Instead, I have opted to present my findings as a series of bullet points. Special thanks to the student journalists, both past and present, at the Mass Media for digitizing old copies of their work which are extensively referenced here in the absence of official documentation and communication. 

• Reiterating, briefly, that by Fall 2022 The Watermark was no longer offering prize support per testimony from former staff writers. 

• An October 17th, 2001 Mass Media newspaper article by Nicolas Gould states “in addition to the Graduate Student Assembly donating $1,000 (for the first time) to help fund and support Watermark, the primary funding is by the undergraduate Student Senate.”

• A December 12th, 2002 Mass Media newspaper article by Evan Sicuranza states, quote, “The journal, which is funded by the Student Activities fees, costs about $10,000 to print. 4,000 copies are printed each year. [emphasis mine]The journal ranges between 90 and 120 pages in length.

• A December 12th, 2002 Mass Media newspaper article by Evan Sicuranza states, quote, “The co-editors also stated that The Lillian Lorraine Jones Memorial Prize, which has previously been awarded by the Watermark for the most exemplary piece of writing in the journal, will most likely not be offered this year as its budget has run out and the professor responsible for the prize, Martha Collins, is no longer at UMB. But replacing that will be $200 prizes for the best piece in each category. These prizes will be judged by professors outside of the school and by local writers. The prizes are funded by the English Department, and the Watermark is in the process of looking for funding from the Art Department as well.”

• A September 17th, 2003 Mass Media newspaper article by Gin Dumcius states, quote “Staffers of UMass Boston’s literary magazine will be getting paid this semester, despite the fact there is no money in its account right now, the Student Senate decided. In a unanimous vote, the senate gave The Watermark $1772 to pay for staff positions for the fall semester. There had been some confusion as to whether the magazine, made entirely by and for students, had any of the money allocated by the senate last semester, nearly $4,000 in total, left in its account.”

• A November 7th, 2003 Mass Media newspaper article by Colleen Barry confirms a modest honorarium of $150 total for the “best pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.”at The Watermark. 

• A December 3rd, 2003 Mass Media newspaper article by Abbas Gokal says, quote, “GSA [Graduate Student Assembly] members voted to donate $2,000 in response to a funding request by the editors of The Watermark, UMass Boston’s student arts and literary publication. The GSA is proud to support The Watermark in their efforts to showcase the talented works of our students.”

• A December 3rd, 2004 Mass Media newspaper article by Arthur Guray says, quote, “B&F Committee Funds Watermark, Announces ProjectsBudget and Finance Committee Chair Tristan Lowe announced the Committee’s approval of $4,000 for the Watermark’s first-ever Fall Issue.”

• A November 27th, 2006 Mass Media newspaper article by Denez McAdoo states, quote, “At 128 pages with 16 full-color glossy pages of visual art, The Watermark has only improved with age. Rosie and Shea have introduced some new ideas into this year’s program with the first ever Watermark Scholarships competitition [authors note: typo preserved from original article], awarded to two college-bound Boston high school students, one in art and writing. Contest-winners will each receive $500 toward tuition and expenses and have their submission printed in the pages of the spring Watermark. This semester also marks the first time The Watermark will be sold off-campus-the proceeds will help underwrite the scholarship.”

• Volume #16 states that, quote, ‘The Watermark is supported by a yearly grant from the UMB Undergraduate Student Senate and Graduate Student Senate’

• A January 25, 2013 Mass Media newspaper article (which does not list an author) states, quote “We don’t have the funding,” said Donna Neal, Assistant Director of Arts and Cultural Activity. The literary journal is funded through the $16 media fee. Students have the option to waive the fee, and in recent semesters more than half the student body chose to do just that. “I know there are a lot of mandatory fees on the tuition bill and things that students can’t afford. Money has been tight over the last couple of years for lots of people, and students will deduct anything they can. Unfortunately for student publications, they deduct the $16,” said Neal.

• The editor's introduction to the 2016-2017 Watermark states, in part:… it’s been a tough year for our community, in the midst of two crises– the University's budget woes, and the broader national attack on the validity of art–it has been difficult to pin down the role of The Watermark, the student-run, student-funded arts journal which you now hold in your hands.

• The editor’s introduction to the Spring 2022 volume of The Watermark states, quote, “thanks to the department and Mass Media for funding this project.” (note: it is not specified which department.)

However, I would like to note that based on informal conversations about how The Watermark worked Post-2018, I was told with reasonable confidence by 4 people that it was funded by The Mass Media. For further details from people who agreed to be on record, please see Questionnaire #1 and #2. My Post-2018 sources did not at all mention anything about the funding pattern described above, which suggests they did not know about it. So what changed in the offices of The Student Undergraduate and Graduate Governments? They supported multiple journals between 2001 and 2007 (at least) to the tune of several thousands of dollars, sometimes per semester. This question, however, could not be answered given their silence and the FOIA report I filed which I was told would fail, some 24 hours after submitting it. It would be another several days before I received a written response, that my request had been denied. But at least it got the ball rolling enough to introduce me to the people who can answer the questions, informally, provided one knows how to ask them informally. 

I would like to now turn attention to prize support and pay. 

Prize support is something in the small-press / publishing world ecosystem that is an almost pre-requisite. You can technically run an unpaid journal, but you’re operating at a significant handicap. Even a modest cash prize (called an honorarium) is now borderline standard and seen as healthy editorial practice. Slapping the word ‘scholarship’ on top of it is, in the eyes of a starving undergrad trying to establish themselves professionally after High School, icing on the cake. This is an incomplete list of all scholarships / prizes that The Watermark used to offer that I have been able to compile from my physical copies of the journals. 

This section was perhaps the most confused to assemble given that awards disappeared, reappeared, and seemed to split into sub-awards (EX: multiple fiction awards listed in Volume #12. I am unsure if they are the same, or genuinely different?) 

Note it is incomplete and not exhaustive due to missing late-run copies of The Watermark. Awards may appear across multiple volumes. 

Note that Volume #10 does name the existence of awards, but not specific awards titles. Note also that Volume #15 declares that it will be giving out two $500 scholarships to be awarded in May, 2006, for college-bound High School juniors and seniors. This is further confirmed by a November 27th, 2006 Mass Media article which must be repeated, in full, 

“At 128 pages with 16 full-color glossy pages of visual art, The Watermark has only improved with age. Rosie and Shea have introduced some new ideas into this year’s program with the first ever Watermark Scholarships competitition, awarded to two college-bound Boston high school students, one in art and writing. Contest-winners will each receive $500 toward tuition and expenses and have their submission printed in the pages of the spring Watermark. This semester also marks the first time The Watermark will be sold off-campus-the proceeds will help underwrite the scholarship.”

So where is the documentation of the winners? 

There should be something easily findable in public. Even just a name, while protecting the minor. While reading Volume 15 it lays out clearly;

The primary selection criteria will be the quality of the submitted work and the demonstrated financial need of the applicant. One contest winner, one runner-up, and three honorable mentions will be selected for the contest. Name and high school of all thus selected will be published following the contest winner's submission. Contest winner will receive 7 copies of the edition ofThe Watermark in which his or her work appears. Runner-up and honorable mentions will each receive 2 copies.

I can respect the desire to protect the identity of a then-minor, but I have read Volume #16 repeatedly and can find no mention of honorable mentions, contest winners, or runners up. I have looked on the Mass Media website (the most comprehensive and available body of secondary data available to me) to find some media blast of a scholarship winner. I have gone digging, as best as I can, through reports from 2006-2007 for some mention of even just the name ‘Watermark Scholarship’. One would think it would not be difficult to find any even fragmentary documentation of a minor receiving a $500 scholarship, this is not something organizations are usually coy about even if they protect the individual identities, some line like ‘we congratulate John Doe, for winning this years Watermark Scholarship’ should be visible in the record. 

With great reluctance I would like to say, I can at current find no record or mention of a $500 Watermark Scholarship award winner. Only award winners of the Chet Frederick, Martha Collins, and Donald E. Cookson awards. Volume #16 states: The awards for each issue are independently judged by a guest writer or artist. Each prize comes with a monetary award of $100. It can be found at the top of page 109 of the pdf version available online. I am eagerly awaiting proof of my own inaccuracy, and will be the first and the loudest, and most relieved to admit I was wrong. But, pending data, these are the facts we must live with. 

I personally do not think the scholarships were ever issued, but this is my personal opinion, not my researchers opinion. It could be that, in the wake of administrative dysfunction, the records were lost. More important documentation has already been lost than data from roughly 20 years ago. But again, scholarships to minors are not discreet things. When I was 18 or 19 applying for scholarships in the twenty-teens these things were borderline shouted from the rooftops. I think, personally, a solid working hypothesis is that the editors promised something in one volume that their successors would do, their successors arrived, and found no money had been left to do it. 

Frankly, 2006 Watermark operated similarly on funding logic 2026 of something called The Breakwater Review. It had aggressive prize support (‘aggressive’ being defined as anything over two zeros), institution backing, and email blasts centered around a regularly scheduled release date timed to the academic year. The difference is, one exists, and the other ended. Whether these trajectories are causally related is unclear, but when looking at chronology it is important to note that the founding of The Breakwater Review in 2009 coincides with the ending of our aforementioned Golden Age period (Volume #9 (2003) to Volume #18 (2009). 

The Breakwater Review is the MFA’ programs student-run publication, and in 2025 it gave out $2,000 worth of prizes to contest winners ($1,000 for fiction + publication in Issue #38 and $1,000 for poetry + publication in Issue #38.) While peak Watermark offered about 50% less than what Breakwater offers in terms of prize support, it is still a notable chunk of cash and successfully serves to insert itself into the cultural conversation. The difference is Breakwater was open globally to everyone but current UMass Boston MFA students. Watermark was attempting to fund two $500 scholarships to teenagers trying to make it to college and buy textbooks, illustrating the difference between a prestige, departmentally owned and focused publication and a community focused publication. 

This is not to drag the Breakwater Review. It is a lovely publication. But the fact of the record is that after outreach to MFA professors and Breakwater MFA student editors, data or anecdotes were not made available for this study by their choice, in a very uncoordinated way. I could not get that many people from the MFA program to discuss this, in any capacity. I suspect it is in part due to my being an MA student, not an MFA student, and therefore having no peer network to really call on for independent departmental history research. To them, I was just some guy, even when we were taking cross-department classes together. Or it could just be that I asked them at the dawn of the semester, when workloads were accelerating, but it is interesting to note that, again, the only reason this work on The Watermark exists is because of informal outreach and peer-to-peer contact. 

The consequence of this is the financial analysis presented here is based on publicly available submission listings, such as those from Submittable, a popular online submission platform for writers, and their own website, and must be treated as circumspect. I am unsure in the extreme what actually happens at The Breakwater Review, beyond knowing that they are run by student-editors, and that these student editors rotate not unlike Watermark Editors did on graduation cycles. I also know that Editors were in a ‘editing and publishing course’ which we discuss at length in the Questionnaires, meaning mentorship networks do exist. 

I feel I have done my due diligence in reaching out, and cataloging the absence of data received.  Let’s look at what happens to community focused publications, slowly and then suddenly. 

Financial donation, year 2000, Dr. John Junker, who, quote “donated the money for a much needed new computer we give an extra-special thanks.” (Volume #7)

The Lillian Lorraine Jones Memorial Prize (Volume #2,  #6,  #7, #8, #9)

Chet Frederick Fiction Award (Volume #12, # 13, #14, #16, #17, #18)

Donald E. Cookson Non-Fiction Award (Volume #16, #18)

Richard Yarde Art Award (Volume #17,  #18)

‘The Art Award’ (Volume #11.5 , #12, #13 , #14)

‘The Non-Fiction Award’ (Volume #13, #14)

‘The Poetry Award’ (Volume #12, #14)

‘The Fiction Award’ (Volume #12, #14)

Martha Collins Poetry Award (Volume #13, #14,  #16, #17, #18)

‘The Watermark Signature Awards, funded by Narrow Way Plumbing and Heating’ (Volume 20, note that Volume #20 accompanies a full page advertisement for Narrow Way Plumbing and Heating). 

Before we begin a serious analysis of this award distribution, I would like to mention that Howth Castle Volume # 7 to Watermark Volume #1 each featured multiple advertisements for local bookstores, indicating a period of (however small) financial independence or semi independence that overlapped with high submission counts. 

Returning to Watermark funding, however, this pattern echoes and reinforces our earlier argument about a golden age that corroborates the idea that it was only golden because it was lovingly invested in by its community.  

Secondly, note how the last year prize support was offered, it was not departmental (either English or MFA), administrative (from undergrad / grad student government) or administrative (from UMass / Mass Media) but from a plumbing company in Dorchester, Massachusetts. I would like to point out that this fact came as a surprise to some figures within the office of student activities. They did not know this was happening, but by this point it was history so old that no one was left in student activities who remembered it, and they responded with alarm when shown digitized acknowledgements of it on ScholarWorks. The plumbing company still exists, I hesitantly believe. 

I do not point this out to degenerate the staff who worked on that issue. They did the best they could with the tools they had, and still managed to put out a hell of a volume that was a worthy continuation of Watermark tradition. No fault lies with the students. 

I would also like to repeat a passage from Volume #21. Because I was reading this without my glasses, and to my mild embarrassment skipped past the tiny font under the list of contributors which I incorrectly assumed was all basic legal disclaimer information. I found the following fragments baked into the legal disclaimer. I have, to spare you having to read several hundred words of copyright laws, only pasted the relevant information. The issue is still digitally available on ScholarWorks and the Internet Archive, should you desire to see it in full yourself. 

…who collected most of the content in this volume in 2012 into an issue which was never printed…unfortunately many of the color images could not be printed in this volume due to budgetary constraints…the full pdf of the volume…can be viewed on our website…we could only afford to print 76 pages this fall. 

I would like to ask if the mention of a pdf on a private and now-lost Watermark journal website is also the same PDF which was uploaded to ScholarWorks, or if we are already treating a variant as representative of the full picture? Did the ScholarWorks staff just digitize an existing hard copy? I do not know. Neither did my contacts in Student Activities, who were able to pull up actual PDF’s of volumes on their computers. I stood there, dumbfounded, as they showed me a series of PDF’s of post-2016 Watermarks. The physical books are fundamentally gone or almost gone. But the digital files exist on one cloud-based network, locked behind an email which only 1-2 people on campus have access to. 

This revelation of legal boilerplate page numbers due to funding issues carries with it further implications about late stage funding patterns, we know they were somewhat erratic, but data continues to leak out in editors notes, legal disclaimers, and Questionnaires in the Appendix that shrinkage was the norm, and reversal was not. A decline, when begun, is almost impossible to arrest in organizations. The exact numbers can be argued over in the absence of official data, but the trend downward is now documented and apparent. 

  After rereading the Volume #21 legal disclaimer I also looked into the legal boilerplate language of Volume #20 from Spring 2013, which states ‘we could only afford to print 144 pages.’ They also admit to accepting 30% of all total submissions.

Volume # 19 had 61 pages, Volume #20 had 144 pages, Volume #21 had 76 pages, Volume #22 had 246,  and Volume #34 had 44 pages. Note that Volumes #20 and #21 were formatted in length and width more like photo books, while Volume #34 was a saddle stitched booklet sized 6x9 looking book. 

I would like to end on the tentative idea that we could potentially use page count to indicate funding levels, and therefore rarity levels of overall print statistics, setting aside our Editor-in-Chief testimony in the histories section confirming around 1,000 or less copies made between 2014 and 2023. If Late Stage Watermark was operating under 1,000 copies per release (between 2016-2023), and there was a consistency in the page numbers there, we can infer that Early Late Stage Watermark post Volume 23 operated on a similar model that steadily accelerated.