Medill boasts a number of notable journalist alumni – big-name NBC White House Correspondent Peter Alexander, for example. Rarely, however, do onlookers focus on alums fresh out of Medill and early in their career.
I spoke to Medill alumna (‘22) Giovana Gelhoren last December, and a great deal can be learned from a journalist still early in her professional life as she navigates the entertainment world and the fast-paced media landscape. Gelhoren currently does entertainment coverage for SheKnows, a women-focused online publication, and is a former Digital News Writer for People Magazine, where she did her Journalism Residency during her time at Medill. After working part-time at People during the Spring Quarter of her senior year, Gelhoren took on a full-time job with them after graduation.
But her love for journalism started long before she arrived in Evanston. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Gelhoren worked for her high school newspaper and eventually found her creative home with college-level publications, specifically STITCH Magazine and, of course, North by Northwestern.
Gelhoren cited her first NBN meeting as an event signalling her to pursue journalism further “It was in this big room in the MFC, and it was filled with people. And the editor was like, ‘does anyone have any pitches?’ And I still wasn’t too sure what a pitch meant, and so I just started listing off, like, a billion ideas,” Gelhoren said.
This moment taught her the value of finding her own voice, both in her ideas and in her writing. “For me to get into that meeting completely unprepared and have a lot of ideas, was also kind of a sign…like, you’ve got it. So yeah, that’s kind of how I got the bug, and I think NBN has really stuck with me since.”
Gelhoren mainly contributed to NBN’s Life & Style section, where she developed a keen interest in the intersection of fashion and pop culture. One of her early stories highlighted the community of women who wear hijabs on Northwestern’s campus. Here, Gelhoren blended relevant cultural themes with her natural flair for fashion and style-focused writing. She then rose to be Executive Editor for NBN, as well as Print Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief for STITCH Magazine.
Gelhoren was eager to explore “more trendy stuff,” and she found her niche at NBN and STITCH, choosing the immediacy and freedom of real-time reporting over the slower, more feature-driven format of traditional Medill classes. This approach has seamlessly carried over into her career today. Now, as a young journalist, Gelhoren is focused on what she refers to as the “New Journalism”—fast-paced, trending content designed to capture the attention of Internet-savvy readers.
At People, she discovered her love for entertainment journalism specifically. “For people who like entertainment writing…You just like entertainment. You talk TV shows. You like movies. You talk about them 24/7, and I did,” Gelhoren said. What she hadn’t realized at the time was that her enthusiasm for pop culture could evolve into a career. “I was like an encyclopedia for celebrities, for example. ”
Now, Gelhoren is constantly on the go. She writes, on average, around five to six stories per day for SheKnows, focusing on celebrity updates, the latest in trending pop culture and movies and television news. Often, she turns around stories in just 30 minutes.
“What I love about my job is that it’s very varied,” she said, explaining that she enjoys writing anything from longer list galleries (see 15 Books to Read ASAP If You’re Obsessed With Grey’s Anatomy) to red carpet coverage and press junkets (see Scarlett Johansson, Busy Philipps & More Stars Who Looked Sharp at American Museum of Natural History’s 2023 Gala) to a quick update on a celebrity feud (see Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni’s Feud Was Reportedly ‘Building Up Since Day One’ on the Set of It Ends With Us).
However, her favorite part of her job comes with her exclusive interviews. At the time of our conversation in December, she had just wrapped up an exclusive interview with Pamela Anderson and the cast of Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl.
Gelhoren realizes how surreal her job can be during exclusive interviews like these. She frequently attends online press junkets, waiting for her turn to enter a breakout room with an Oscar winner to conduct a five-minute interview for SheKnows.
The power of the moment is never lost on her. After connecting with such public figures like Sarah Furguson, Duchess of York, and the cast of Saturday Night Live, Gelhoren has realized two things. First, celebrities are just people. Gelhoren can connect with them through their conversations, and both parties can have a good time and strike up quite a rapport (Gelhoren bonded with singer Jordan Sparks, for example, when Sparks said she recognized her from “somewhere”). Second, while she has indeed decided celebrities are not as inaccessible as they seem, she still believes that her day-to-day life as a journalist is pretty unreal. “Like, I left that [SNL cast] red carpet with my coworker, and we were like, this is incredible. Like, what is our job?”
In a media climate built on constantly changing trends and short attention spans, Gelhoren’s job represents what much of the media landscape is becoming. The key for her is maintaining a balance between in-person contact and interviews and keeping her audience constantly updated on pop culture goings-on. She does not want to feel like “a robot as part of this wheel of churning news,” but she needs to keep up with the pace of the trends.
In just a few years, Gelhoren has already built up a solid journalism career, but she’s far from done. She’s eager to secure more exclusives, interview even bigger names and grow her audience. For aspiring journalists, she offers simple but powerful advice: write as much as you can and keep honing your craft–Practice, practice, practice.
But what is her biggest piece of advice for current aspiring journalists and NBN contributors? It may seem cliché, but Gelhoren said the most important part of this industry is hard work.
“I would do the morning shift at People when I was a digital news writer, and it would literally be hell on Earth sometimes,” she shared. “But I think I made connections there that I still have to this day because I’m a hard worker, and I will always be,” she concluded.
“You made it to Northwestern, so you are a hard worker… just keep it going.”
For now, you can follow Gelhoren’s work for SheKnows, and keep an eye out for this NBN Alum’s latest interviews and articles as she continues to carve out her space in the world of entertainment journalism.
