Three student media groups merged. Their budget tripled
Inside the 547-day revival of an abandoned student newsroom in Maryland
When Arpa Shahnazarian first joined The Retriever, the student newspaper at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the newsroom was a ghost town.
Missing ceiling tiles, infestations of ants and gnats and layers of dust were all that remained of a once-active space.
Post-pandemic burnout and lack of institutional support had left the paper “completely dead,” she said, with an inconsistent online presence and almost no print editions.
“The walls were bare; it was sterile in here. No one ever came in here,” said Shahnazarian, now the paper's editor-in-chief. “The Retriever was almost exclusively being run just through emails to writers.”
But in just 547 days, that abandoned space was transformed into a bustling hub of collaboration.
By uniting the campus newspaper, radio station and literary arts journal, a dedicated group of students and their new advisor built the UMBC Student Media Collective.
The move not only revived their physical newsroom but also tripled their budget, secured stipends for previously unpaid students and created a unified voice for student media on campus.
‘Strengths in numbers’
The transformation began when Ann Tropea was hired in October 2023 to advise The Retriever. She almost immediately started hearing from students and faculty about other media groups in need.
The campus radio station, WMBC, had no physical space, and Bartleby, the creative arts journal, felt disconnected from the university, housed within the English department, she said.
Seeing the empty, unused offices in The Retriver’s suite, Tropea proposed an idea.
“What would you guys think about letting the radio station occupy one of those office spaces and kind of living with us?” she asked the newspaper staff. “Everyone was on board. They were like, ‘Hell yes, the radio is cool. That would be fun.’”
This initial act of cohabitation snowballed.
The three separate student organizations decided to dissolve their individual charters and reform as a single entity.
They drafted a shared constitution, creating the Student Media Collective, governed by an executive board of six students, two from each publication.
“There is no hierarchy within the executive board,” said Tropea, who serves as a non-voting advisor. “It’s all collaborative and run on consensus.”
Turning collaboration into cash
Merging wasn’t just a cultural decision but a strategic one.
As a single, unified “charter organization,” the collective gained a special status on campus that allowed it to request a significant annual budget directly from the student government.
The only other similar organization on campus is the Student Events Board.
“We were able to triple our budget from where it started,” Tropea said.
The impact was immediate. Students at WMBC and Bartleby, who had never been paid for their work, now receive stipends. Every student leader at The Retriver saw their pay increase.
“There’s a lot of support from student affairs to promote and uplift student-run media,” Tropea said, pointing to the student government’s approval of both the charter and the budget request to “make sure students are compensated for the incredible work they’re doing.”
‘Built a plane while we were flying it’
The 547-day journey from Tropea’s start date to the day the charter was officially approved was a lesson in advocacy and persistence for them.
Tropea said he role as a full-time staff advisor gave her the time to “advocate, advocate, advocate everywhere I could.” She’s also an adjunct faculty and the assistant director for engaged media with the Center for Democracy and Civic Life.
Her advice for advisors is to ask questions, listen to students’ problems and work alongside them as colleagues to find solutions.
Once the vision for the collective was clear, she focused on building relationships with senior administrators and faculty.
“Essentially, we built the plane while we were flying it,” she said.
The growing activity in the newsroom eventually attracted a visit from the vice president of student affairs, who Tropea said was so impressed that she invited the university president and provost to see it for themselves.
For students, the lesson is to organize.
“Change isn’t something that happens to you,” Tropea said. “Change is something that you make for yourself.”
Shahnazarian agreed, adding that finding a faculty or staff ally is important.
“If we didn’t have someone like Ann … a lot of us, including myself, would probably get very, very discouraged,” she said.
Her advice to fellow student editors is to be stubborn.
“I can say this as the editor-in-chief: don’t let anyone bully you into not publishing what you want, when you want and how you want,” Shahnazarian said.
A new center for campus life
The collective has become more than just an administrative structure. The revitalized newsroom is now a place where students from all three organizations hang out, do homework and collaborate.
This cross-pollination has been a key driver of their growth. When WMBC hosted a spring music festival, it brought a wave of attention to all three publications.
“People started following their Instagram and then they started reposting stuff that The Retriver would post and Bartleby would post,” Shahnazarian said.
Students who came to the radio station discovered a passion for writing. Writers also found an outlet for their creative short stories in Bartleby.
“It really was like strength in numbers that caused us to go from, again, essentially unknown on campus to people being like, ‘Yes, I want to join,’” Shahnazarian said.
Now, with a stable foundation and a steady budget, the collective is looking ahead.
For Shahnazarian, the next goal is to restore The Retriver’s print frequency. While the paper currently prints monthly as it rebuilds its staff after recent graduations, she hopes to return it to its former bi-weekly and, eventually, weekly schedule.
It’s a goal that speaks to the collective’s larger mission: not just to survive but to build a resilient and lasting home for student journalism.
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