“So, what do you do?”
The dreaded question posed to any freelancer. How do you sum up the criss-crossing projects, unpaid labour, and ever-changing roles that go into freelancing?
I was always told when I was studying to be a journalist that I needed to find my niche. “What do you want to write aboutmost ?” people asked me. The only answer I had was people. My favourite stories are always the ones where I get to talk to a wide range of people, where I get to dig into a topic that speaks to a curiously unique human experience.
But as for a proper niche? I’ve been struggling to find one over the past year of freelancing, as anyone who has been tracking my Instagram bio changes will have seen: tech journo -> travel journo -> lifestyle writer -> freelance journalist (the point where I gave up trying to define my niche).
Last week, a trend did the rounds on Journo Twitter: ‘show your range but make it writing’. This was my contribution, showing just how wide I throw my net when it comes to sourcing stories.
The societal and environmental implications of secondhand shopping, niche TikTok communities creating crowd-sourced medical tech, the history of queer video games, and night-time hikes to see the stars - can you see the common thread? For the life of me, I can’t.
A few weeks ago, I had a crisis of self-doubt, wondering if I had irreparably damaged my career trajectory by not narrowing my writing down to a specific niche. I took to Twitter to ask if a niche was necessary.
The results were pretty even, but with a clear majority that most people feel that journalists don’t need a niche. I felt reassured, but I still often find myself chatting to other journalists or offering my services as a content writer and struggling to answer the question of ‘what do you write about’ or ‘what’s your speciality’ in anything less than several long, jumbled sentences.
From my perspective, I think a niche can come in handy for personal branding. If you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, it’s more likely that editors will think of you for relevant commissions, more likely you’ll be asked to speak on panels in that area, and so on.
But I recently had an editor reach out to me for a commission based on work they’d seen me publish, despite my diverse portfolio. I can also see certain links between my articles because I know what interested me about them in the first place, even if they don’t neatly fit into the same box as the next one.
It put a huge smile on my face to see so many freelance journos celebrating their range on Twitter last week - and to see how truly diverse those ranges were. It’s put a spring in my step knowing I can be free to write on what interests me. Maybe a niche will find me at some point, but at the moment, I’m taking a leaf out of Gabby’s book below and not stressing about it.