The growth of the North Harford Journalism Department has evolved over the past few years which includes a monthly newspaper staff to its newest publication, The Niche.

The staff is made up of thirteen students who took the Journalism one course and had to apply to be on staff. The staff consists of juniors and seniors who are all passionate about writing and sharing their opinion.

“The staff chose the name The Niche because they felt that the magazine would have something for everyone; finding your ‘niche’ is an expression used to explain how students identify with what they like, and the content in the magazine hopefully will reflect that,” said advisor Jennifer Chandler.

In addition, the magazine is published monthly and has 24 pages per issue, but their goal at the end of the year is to reach 50.

According to senior Heather Cachola, it is stressful starting something new, but the end product is always rewarding.

“I think its going well, there are a lot of kinks we have to work out because we are new at it,” said Cachola.

Each month, the magazines has themes. The theme for September’s issue was “New Beginnings” for the start of a new year including freshman advice and October was “The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad…” which was based off a children’s book by Judith Viorst and focusing around Halloween.

The plan for the November issue is “gratitude” because the magazine staff wanted to try something different rather than sticking to seasons, holidays, or specific times of the year.

“We chose gratitude because there is a lot of different things you can do for it,” said Cachola. “Like for me, my page is on soldiers because I think it is a shame that people forget about them.”

Monthly, a set number of students are in charge of designing the pages on the computer and writing the content for their pages. In addition, they are responsible for selecting a theme and designing a front cover.

“I love working on the magazine, its different than the newspaper because you can be crazy with the colors and layouts,” said junior staff member Katherine Duley.

Although, the challenging parts of the magazine are selecting interesting content and designing the pages interesting enough for people to want to read.

“After each issue comes out, its gets easier for us to say what we need to work on,” said Cachola.

Critiquing is a huge part of the magazine staff and they are always open for new ideas and how to effectively change their issues because the magazine is new and upcoming.

“We work together, its a small staff so we are a close knit group,” said Cachola.

The magazine has already given out all 150 copies of his September issue and all 200 copies of its October issue within days.

“I think that its cool that journalism has a magazine and newspaper now,” said senior Megan Wooten. “I love how the magazine stands out with all the colors.”