So you wanna be a journalist?
Welcome to the craft, but wave toodle-loo to standard work hours. Deadlines will rule your world, a by-any-means-necessary attitude will drive your assignments, and you’ll likely talk to editors more frequently than your chat with dear ol’ mom. Brace yourself for an obsession with itty bitty details like word choice — what would happen if you were just crazy enough to use “vermillion” instead of “crimson?” — and oh, one more thing: you have to pick a niche to build your skills around. Then again, maybe not.
Seasoned journalists have, for the longest time, advised industry newbies and media fortune-seekers to find a beat that focuses their career aspirations in one particular area. Music and sports aficionado Nelson George offered this bit of wisdom to recent J-school graduates:
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“Become a specialist. If you’re a good enough writer, sure, you can write about everything. But I do think to become a well-known force, you have to be known for being an expert — being very versed in economics, being very versed in health, being very versed in music, being very versed in sports. People are looking for people who seem to know a lot about something. That’s why blogs are so interesting, why some websites and TV shows, too. So I think having an area of specialization or expertise is very important.”
| “If you’re a good enough writer, sure, you can write about everything. But I do think to become a well-known force, you have to be known for being an expert.” |
Heart & Soul executive editor Kendra Lee agrees. True, there’s no hard and fast rule when it comes to shaping your entire career on a single area of specialty, she says. But she still thinks it’s a wise thing to consider. Writers can’t afford to be one-trick ponies in this economy. (Don’t we all know?) With so many other opportunities looming as offshoots of an editorial career — television appearances, speaking engagements, book projects — having a niche establishes journalists as instant experts because they know a subject inside and out.
Lee shaped her own career around black women’s health and is one in a very small body of specialists in that area. “I covered entertainment, including sports and a little bit of health, for a number of years. One day, I woke up and realized I didn’t care which celebrity was dating which athlete, or which teams were headed toward the playoffs, or who had new music dropping,” she remembers. “I wanted to cover something meaningful, and I’d also dealt with a serious illness and had to bone up on my health knowledge to know what questions to ask doctors. So, I shifted my focus to health, specifically women’s health.”
She counts herself among roughly five or six female journalists in the country who are considered experts in the area of black women’s health. Being one in that very small, but very in-demand, number has given her a steady stream of work and a reputation as an authority in the field. “Picking a niche helps down the road, especially if it’s a subject that isn’t overloaded with writers. A media outlet might have all the entertainment reporters it needs, but few or no business writers,” she explains. “It’s also good to be a go-to writer on a topic. If your niche is women’s health, for example, you become an expert of sorts on the subject. That can come in handy on future projects, like books or CNN specials.”
| “Many writers worry that by limiting themselves to one or two subject areas, they’ll miss out on other assignments ___ and the paychecks that go along with them.” |
Still, many writers struggle with a fear of commitment, worrying that by limiting themselves to one or two subject areas they’ll miss out on a wealth of general assignment or broader spectrum work — and the paychecks that go along with them. Fret not, says Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Thanks to the boom of blogs and online outlets, much of the field is being reconfigured anyway, he says. “A big part of the future of journalism is niche online publications and trying to deal with a complicated subject in depth for people who are especially interested in it. That’s part of the future of journalism — being able to really understand and discuss topics. The real question, he asks, “is this going to be a world where people pick one topic, one beat, and stay on it for life? Or is it a world where being on a beat, being an expert is important, but people will switch from topic to topic?”
What Lemann has seen, however, are students picking areas of study that they’re passionately interested in, even if, according to Lemann, they’re not the most in-demand. “Journalists are not the world__?s most practical people, so the areas where most jobs are are not always the areas that get the most applications,” he says.
You don’t have to give up on other interests in the name of being a subject guru. Find a way to make them intersect, advises Sherri Thomas, founder of Career Coaching 360, who helps clients around the world score their dream positions. “You’re going to be in higher demand if you have a niche. Every newspaper, every online magazine, they have two or three key areas that distinguish them from other media outlets. You want to be able to say, ‘I know your audience. I live it. I breathe it everyday. I am your person,'” she adds. “Once you show them you have expertise in this area, you want to say, ‘oh, by the way, I have these other key areas of expertise.’ By doing that, you’re showing them you also have other skills so they can tap into.”
Being a specialist hasn’t stalled Lee’s other passions. “Though I cover health, that hasn’t stopped me from doing the occasional relationship article, or travel story, or entertainment piece, or even sports feature,” she says. “You have to decide how much you can carry on your plate, however. I only do something non-health related if I know I’ll have enough time to do the appropriate reporting, because my contacts in those other fields aren’t as beefy as my health rolodex.” For general assignment journalists or writers who’ve established a name in one area and want to pare down, carving out a beat doesn’t limit career possibilities. In fact, it can open them up.
Tips for picking a niche:
1. Do your homework. If you know how to report, you can cover anything. You can switch from being a general assignment reporter to an education or science or fashion reporter.
2. Increase your network. If you’re an established journalist making a switch to a more specialized field, build up contacts in your new subject matter and let old contacts know you’re shifting your focus.
3. Stack your clips. Pitch stories in your specialty to outlets you have existing relationships with or new outlets with a need for that type of content to build up a portfolio in your new subject areas.
4. Specialize, even within your niche. Rather than billing yourself as a food critic, for example, narrow it down even more to a particular type of food like Brazilian or Italian. 5. Follow your passion. Don’t choose a beat just because it’s trendy or in high demand. This is an opportunity to shape an expertise around a subject — or handful of subjects — that genuinely matter to you.
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Janelle Harris is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. She documents her editorial adventures at www.thewriteordiechick.com.
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