One of my first internship experiences was with the huge media company, Bauer Publishing. It has always been my dream to work for a magazine (it still is!), so I was ecstatic to have this opportunity from January to May of 2017.
Bauer Publishing is one of the top sellers of magazines in the United States. J-14, a popular teen magazine, is one you might remember reading in middle school. There are offices in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey and in Los Angeles, California. The digital media side of the company was completely separate, so I never worked with anything on the web.
As an editorial intern for Life&Style, In Touch, and Closer magazines – I was tasked with compiling lists of the latest headlines in celebrity news and recent tweets from celebrities’ accounts. It got pretty tedious sometimes, but I was always told how efficient and thorough my work was. Transcribing interviews was another huge aspect of the internship… days when there was nothing for me to transcribe were rare!
I would sometimes get assigned to do research whenever a reporter needed assistance or there was a breaking news story that had to get done ASAP. I’ve researched Taylor Swift’s social media disappearance and found people who saw Scott Disick in Las Vegas.
What I Learned:
1. Celebrity gossip is overwhelming. I didn’t know that until I started working at a company that focuses most of its content on it, but it gets very annoying. I’d much rather work at a lifestyle magazine or website one day.
2. Being the only intern in the department is not fun. I somehow ended up being the only intern on both days I worked, while there were usually three interns the rest of the week. Not only did it get lonely during downtime, but there was much more pressure on me sometimes.
3. While print is still great, my heart prefers digital. Our magazines were printed weekly. Since the digital part of the company was in a completely separate office, I didn’t get the opportunity to experience that. I’m definitely much more interested in how quick and interactive digital media is.
4. Meeting as many people as you can is so much more important than I thought. I spent four months being quiet and minding my own business. It was my first job in an office that big, so I was too nervous to introduce myself to everyone else who worked for the company. If I could go back, I would introduce myself to more people and get my name out there.
Since interning at Bauer Publishing, I’ve moved on to intern and write for a bunch of awesome companies and websites. I’m extremely grateful for my experience there and I hope to end up back in the magazine industry in the near future (preferably digital)!