Jay Rosen’s “When starting from zero in journalism go for a niche site serving a narrow news interest well” applies to how our group works in that we are each researching a specific topic. Our group is researching ghost stories and we originally had this broad view of what we wanted to research, such as the history of ghost stories, but upon our actual beginning of research, realized how broad of a topic that would be. Instead, we found an article from ScienceDirect and thought it would be more effective to parallel the history of ghost stories and ghost story commercialism in Scotland to that of Arcadia. This is a more niche topic that might interest a specific group of people. It also works in that since our podcast audience is Arcadia students, using Scotland as an example works nice because certain students have studied abroad in Scotland, and as Rosen states in his article, the audience might be more knowledgeable on certain things than we are (such as specific ghost stories in Scotland or the commercial tourism there relating to ghosts and the history of the place).
In regards as to why interviews are not enough, interviews do not placate every need of both the researcher and the audience of that researcher’s platform, to have a well-rounded understanding of a niche topic. For instance, with our group’s project, if we were to only interview one or two Arcadia students regarding any ghost stories or hauntings experienced on campus, that limits the information the researcher collects, and therefore the information they present to their audience. Simply interviewing one or two Arcadia students about ghosts would only speak to those people’s experiences and not the broader area of study. Interviews can, however, provide the researcher with a first-hand account or experience regarding the topic, which may make it more personable to the audience by including an interview of someone who has experienced something in the field. Also, it cannot be all of the research because there are plenty of other sources that can be explored that also may interest certain audience members more than others. Like Rosen said, the audience might know more than the researcher does on some subjects because it is a niche topic. For our podcast, if we were to only use interviews as our form of research, that may provide some value, but audience members would have a lot more to say about the history of ghost stories, and even the ghost stories at Arcadia.
Outside sources, like the ScienceDirect study, our scholarly articles, as well as other forms of media, provide the niche audience with a much more complete and well-rounded view of the niche topic. Interviews can often be biased, as well, so it’s better to have many different resources available to a researcher to draw upon when presenting the research, whether it’s through a website, a podcast, a television show, a journal article, etc.
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