Having launched her blog pandorasykes.com in 2010, before her role at The Sunday Times Style, the original idea behind it was to serve as a platform where she mainly drew attention to her published work. Over the years Sykes managed to develop a different writing style, one that escaped the strict style codes of journalism. As argued by McRobbie these are deeply rooted in the publication’s ‘house style’, which has become essential for magazines, to...
Having launched her blog pandorasykes.com in 2010, before her role at The Sunday Times Style, the original idea behind it was to serve as a platform where she mainly drew attention to her published work. Over the years Sykes managed to develop a different writing style, one that escaped the strict style codes of journalism. As argued by McRobbie these are deeply rooted in the publication’s ‘house style’, which has become essential for magazines, to educate staff members on tone and language of the publication as well as on how to report on fashion. While house styles encourage professionalism in fashion writing, they are of disadvantage to a journalist’s writing freedom, with journalists being more or less forced to adapt their writing to the style of the publication.
This escape of norms is evident in Sykes articles on the blog that are mainly driven by fashion criticism, her persona, and intimacy. These are evident in articles such as or. As Coward argues, this type of writing has become a standard in digital journalism that she describes as “confessional journalism” driven by self-expression as the “dominant form.” Moreover, this type of journalism has challenged the traditional sense of journalistic objectivity, that “differentiates between fact and opinion” as set out in the UK’s National Union of Journalists ‘code of conduct’.
