I dont think its niche, it seems like the core use case is opening the site and reading through a pick of the front page articles, in that case opening in a new

I dont think its niche, it seems like the core use case is opening the site and reading through a pick of the front page articles, in that case opening in a new window saves either half the clicks, or having to press back all the time (as long as the article isnt interesting enough to click through further)