What factors define an excellent fashion journalist?

Nevertheless, the majority of the journalistic ground rules of fashion writing have survived in the digital media and still “make excellent fashion journalists” stand out and recognizable in the digital space. For Bradford, these are identified through principals that she outlines to be “fashion journalism [that] is based on telling stories” seen through quotes, research, and facts as well as a peg and angle. Taken together, these are essential in order to differentiate fashion writing produced by a professional journalist from a blogger, as I will argue with the example of Pandora Sykes on the next page.
Figure 3.1 Pandora Sykes’s article for Man Repeller.

As Bradford argues, one of the first skills that distinguish a professional journalist’s work from a blogger comes with the skill of research. Primary research can be found in the form of quotes and comments throughout Sykes’ article. While primary research proves a journalist’s social connections and the amount of social capital in the field of digital media, secondary research serves to back up a story with hard data, facts, and figures and is often a collation of existent research.

When looking at the structure of Sykes’s article and the sentence below, one clearly recognizes that she addresses the issue in the first sentence of her story: “When Rejina Pyo began brainstorming her much-hyped debut SS18 runway show in London, she was certain of one thing: half the cast should be non-models. Beginning with the strongest arguments first in a story is what Bradford refers to as the “inverted pyramid” in journalism that narrows down to the less important facts towards the end of the article. This type of technique is used by professional journalists to grab a reader’s attention right at the beginning and serves as the hook of the story.