About the Journal
A small editorial desk that reads British consumer brands closely.
The Choice Journal is a small editorial desk that reads British consumer brands closely and writes down what it finds. It is written in one voice, signed The Journal, and sorted into six desks: Home, Wardrobe, Table, Away, Workshop and Wellbeing. Nobody here is a personality and nobody will be. The work is the thing.
We started it because most writing about shops now exists to be scrolled past on the way to a button. We wanted to write the kind of piece a weekend supplement used to carry: a few thousand words on one brand, read from the top, with a view at the end. If you only want the view, every piece opens with it under In brief. If you want the reasoning, it is all there beneath.
What a piece is
Each piece takes one brand and reads it the way a careful buyer would, given a free afternoon. We go through the range, the delivery and returns pages, the size guides and the published customer reviews. We say what the brand gets right, what it gets wrong, and which lines we would and would not choose. There are no scores. A number out of ten tells you nothing a sentence could not tell you better.
What we do not do is test things in a laboratory or wear them for a month and report back. That would be a different and more expensive publication. Our method is desk research, and we set it out plainly on the How we read page.
How the Journal is paid for
At the time of writing, it is not. The pieces carry a link to the brand concerned, and if the Journal later joins that brand’s affiliate programme a purchase made through the link may earn a small commission. The disclosure page says exactly what that means. Nothing is written to order and no brand sees a piece before it is published.
Corrections
We make mistakes, and when we find one we say so on the Errata page rather than quietly editing it away. If you have spotted something, write to us. Letters are read.