POMONA - Cal Poly Pomona’s student newspaper, The Poly Post, is on the brink of shutting down in June unless it can be bailed out of debt.

A dwindling advertisement base coupled with an eight-year-old structural deficit is threatening the independent student weekly.

‘‘Every day we exist we are losing money,’’ said Sean Scully, faculty adviser of The Poly Post. ‘‘We are at the point of having nothing.’’

Help is on the way – but to what extent is not yet clear.

Cal Poly Pomona President Michael Ortiz assured Rich Kallan, the paper’s publisher, that he will help to secure donations or grants for the once weekly and now bimonthly student paper.

‘‘We are going to do whatever we can,’’ Ortiz said. ‘‘I think ultimately we want to let the Post remain as it has been, a self-supportive operation.’’

The newspaper will end the spring quarter $20,000 to $25,000 in debt, said Kallan, who is also the Communications Department chairman. Each fall the paper has thousands of dollars in start-up costs until payments for advertisements come in about two months later, so the paper can’t start a new academic year without working capital, he said.

Staff members discovered in summer 2002 that The Poly Post owed $17,000 to the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, which provides financial services to the university.

The newspaper staff sold advertisements, but the foundation collected payments for the advertisements and acted as the newspaper’s bank.

For five years, the newspaper staff didn’t understand that the Foundation credited the papers’ account with the amount of money that was charged to advertisers, not what was actually collected, Scully said.

‘‘It looked like the paper was making money,’’ he said.

The newspaper staff spent freely, believing their paper was in the black, when in reality they had about 25 percent less revenue than they thought. The news came as a major blow to the paper, which had no idea it wasn’t spending its own money. The $17,000 is now paid off, but has left the paper void of a reserve.

To make matters worse, the college newspaper is not selling as much advertising compared to pre-Sept. 11 a trend seen nationwide, Scully said. The paper has since acquired the new debt.

In the middle of the winter quarter, wages for most of the paper’s staff were suspended and production was cut in half. While the editorial staff is still working on the paper, the business staff seems to have jumped ship, said Luis Gomez, editor in chief.

‘‘It’s been really hard for all these people to stick around because no one is getting paid,’’ he said. ‘‘I guess they lost interest.’’

President Ortiz believes the paper needs a new marketing strategy to attract more advertising. Scully said he has worked to build up the business staff for the three years he has been the adviser, but has had little success.

Last month, Kallan and Scully sought help from the Instructionally Related Activities Committee, a university board that distributes money to student groups related to instruction. Their request was turned down, delivering a major blow to the paper and the announcement that the paper will likely close.

Upon receiving word about the ailing paper, Ortiz and Barbara Way, dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, have offered to help. Way has already lent the paper $10,000 from the college, but has promised to continue helping, Kallan said.

A committee is also being formed to help identify places that the newspaper can get grants and donations that won’t bind the paper editorially to any one particular group, he said.

‘‘I feel much more comfortable knowing that we have the ear of the president,’’ Kallan said.

‘‘Learn by doing’’ is the polytechnic university’s motto, so closing the paper would be working against the school’s primary objective, said Sports Editor Isaiah Aguirre. He likened closing the paper to taking away beakers from chemistry students.

‘‘This is our tool,’’ he said. ‘‘This is how we learn. This is how people in communications have gotten jobs.’’