Niche Journalism

In a consistently changing world, journalism is pushing its borders towards hitherto unknown and less known areas. One among this is niche journalism: journalism that has a specific target readership which generally addressed magazines in the print media do not cater to. It could be called a kind of specialised writing but not precisely so because specialised journalism is a part of our everyday newspaper that responds to the demands of a more general readership. An example is the daily newspaper where you have a separate sports page or an entertainment supplement. The colour supplements sometimes fulfil the needs of a specific readership but are still a part of the general newspaper. Besides, colour pull-outs for weekends and Sundays also have an advertising strategy in mind, and that is why one comes across so many supplements added to the daily newspaper.

Niche journalism, therefore, is narrower in terms of subject and audience but panoramic within a given subject. Travel magazines are just one example of niche journalism. Anurag Batra in his insightful article in Impact entitled “Why Niche and Special Interest Journalism Count” writes: “Niche journalism, as it has come to be known, is all about provisioning journalistically structured pieces or informative content catering to a specific group of people who want information on a specific subject.”

Niche journalism, it may be pointed out, needs expertise both in the niche subject one is writing on as well as the command over journalistic writing. A computer magazine, for instance, will need columnists and journalists who not only know everything they have to know about a particular area of computers, such as virus programs, but must also have the ability to write the article in easily comprehensible English or the regional language the magazine subscribes to. It needs a specialised command over the area and the subject, and both information and knowledge about ongoing movements taking place in the world of computers. This is precisely the reason that draws top cricketers who have retired from first-class cricket to write columns and articles on the game both in newspapers and in specialised sports magazines.

Sometimes, retired defence personnel turn into brilliant journalists writing on war strategies, arms management, corruption in the armed forces, manipulation in transfers and promotions, and so on. But since there are hardly any specialised magazines on the newsstands addressing defence subjects, and newspapers might touch them with fragile fingers, these retired people choose to go the book way and publish books on their experiences and information rather than write specialised articles. Specialised magazines and journals on automobiles and two-wheelers are examples that demand complete expertise in the subjects.

Magazines specialising in stocks, shares, and financial investments will never recruit regular journalists never mind how experienced and how good they are at their job. It needs specialised knowledge, skill, and ability to churn out articles on the fluctuating stock market which is subject to change every minute, and this must be envisaged in advance by the journalist specialised not only in financial journalism but in the stock, capital, and commodity markets per se. Sucheta Dalal is perhaps the first Indian journalist to have evolved into a financial journalist of great expertise and skill. 

Magazines on cookery, specially subscribed to by hotels and restaurants, call for specialised skills in writing articles on dieting, calorie intake, health issues, baby diets, and so on. People who have made good cooking their lingua franca in life often turn to become excellent cookery journalists, and one of them is Tarla Dalal, who made writing on cookery her full-time job and also published many books. Today, Sanjeev Kapoor does not generally write articles or columns because his website does more than the needful, and he brings out different books on different kinds of food, cooking, and nutrition. Magazines on food, cookery, and nutrition have the added advantage of attracting great advertising support and revenue. The subscriptions to these magazines might not be very high when compared to a general women’s magazine because they are exorbitantly expensive for middle-class pockets. But this loss in subscription is more than compensated by the glossy and great advertisements they attract from restaurants, hotels, cookery equipment manufacturers, food spice and condiment companies, health specialists, and ready-made food firms. Food writing is a specialised field and has been so for around three decades now.

With health having grown into a necessary and profit-making sector in business and industry, health journalism is here to stay. Though ‘health’ like fashion and beauty have become a part of the lifestyle section in newspapers and general magazines, they have also opened doors to specialised journals on health, medicine, organic food and medicine, exercise, and gyms. The health sector is an umbrella for subsectors like hospitals, medical infrastructure, medical devices, clinical trials, outsourcing, telemedicine, health insurance, and medical equipment. “Add to this the statistics of more than a million doctors, about 2 million nurses and around 1.50 million beds, and has the highest number [sic] of medical (over 300) and nursing colleges (over 4,000), there is indeed a lot to write about in this sector,” says Batra.

Environmental journalism is a key area of growth that has become a much demanded field for journalists. The field of environmental journalism has traditionally been represented by the Society of Environmental Journalists that spans reporters assigned by newspapers and magazines to the environmental beat—on pollution, deforestation, and ecosystem. For the most part, environmental journalism has been a subdivision of the science desk. It covers sustainability, deforestation, the ecosystem, indigenous practices in environment preservation, climate change, pollution (in air, water, and lifestyle), poverty, population, and every human aspect that is significant for the preservation of the environment in a holistic sense and not purely in a physical sense. David Roberts, a noted journalist who writes on politics and energy claims that environmental journalism might be a dying niche because it is “boring.” But a field that opens up infinite windows of exploration, discovery, and analysis can hardly be boring. The Energy and Resources Institute brings out a brilliant specialised magazine called TerraGreen every month. The range of articles is so widely dispersed and so rich in knowledge and information that one wonders how the organisation manages to put together so many diverse issues within the covers of a slim volume of around 50+ pages.

Magazines with a strong social agenda are few and far between, but if handled well with the ability to sustain its existence through circulation, they can indeed go a long way. Recently, Kolkata saw the launch of a colour tabloid magazine—both in digitalised and print formats—called Kolkata Gives. Mudar Patherya, its editor, writes, “The Kolkata Gives tabloid was conceived and launched around a central idea that often it was not the absence of a philanthropic urge that prevented people from donating to other causes, but the absence of relevant information.” This is a specialised magazine with a difference. It is not addressed to a niche readership but to everyone interested in knowing a great deal that is happening around us in the city but which the newspapers or the television channels cannot or do not provide. It is focused on individuals who have created their own little islands of sunshine to help some core groups and organisations with a philanthropic bent of mind. The editor adds that “billions are being spent in the area of philanthropy within India today, but the Kolkata Gives tabloid is probably the only publication of its kind that enhances visibility across the broad philanthropic space (as opposed to corporate newsletters that devote a couple of pages to their CSR initiative).”

Journalism for Social Change is in its third iteration as a graduate-level course at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Southern California, and has also been taught as an undergraduate course at San Francisco State University. Is this niche? Or is this regular journalism? The future will decide. In a vibrant democracy, journalism has the power and responsibility to both inform and inspire the public to political action. Achieving this ambitious goal requires a deep understanding of current social problems and how policy is formulated, alongside the ability to tell that story in a manner accessible and engaging to the general public.