A Day in the Life: Interning at PEOPLE Magazine

Outside the Dotdash Meredith office where PEOPLE is located.

By Bellamy Richardson

Hi everyone! My name is Bellamy, and I’m interning at PEOPLE magazine this summer!

I am currently a rising senior at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., majoring in English and concentrating in Jewish studies. At school, I serve as managing editor at our student newspaper, The Williams Record. Last summer, I interned at the Berkshire Eagle, the daily newspaper of Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts, and the summer before that, I interned at the online news source BTW Berkshires. Despite my undying love of small-town Massachusetts, I was born and raised in New York City and am living at home this summer.

Being an editorial intern at PEOPLE has been unlike anything I have ever experienced! Throughout the summer, I have had the chance to take on a myriad of responsibilities on the digital and print sides of the publication.

For print, I am tasked with fact-checking multiple short pieces for the People Picks and Scoop columns every week, and I have gotten to write the captions for the Star Tracks column twice. I have also gotten to interview Liza Koshy for a Q&A that was featured in Scoop, and I got to read a book before it was published for review for People Picks.

The wall of magazine covers of publications owned by Dotdash Meredith, such as PEOPLE, Real Simple, and Travel + Leisure.

For digital, I write 2-3 stories a day that are either assigned by editors or pitched by me. Some of my recent digital stories include Emmy Awards 2022: Stars React to Their ‘Delicious’ Nominations and Stranger Things Live? Find Out Who’s Involved in an Upcoming Stage Spin-Off.

Since PEOPLE is, as the name suggests, about people, I have had the opportunity to interview some really cool people, including High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens and Gossip Girl actress Zuzanna Skadkowski. Later this month, I am going to interview a couple musicians that I pitched for digital stories!

Covering the red carpet for the premiere of The Forgiven at the Tribeca Film Festival.

One of the coolest things I get to do as an intern is cover red carpet events! Last month, I went to the red carpet for the movie premiere of The Forgiven with Jessica Chastain and Christopher Abbott, and tomorrow, I am going to a red carpet for the premiere of the new Netflix series Uncoupled with Neil Patrick Harris. It is so fun — and also slightly intimidating — to see the stars in real life, and getting to talk to them about their work is such a dream! Red carpets can be a lot of waiting around, but I have met many other lovely journalists from other news sources at these events.

Overall, I have had a very eventful summer, and I am so grateful for ASME and PEOPLE for this opportunity!