Polygon Exit Interview: Petrana Radulovic, Entertainment Reporter
Chatting with one of the most essential people to Polygon's voice as a publication about her experience at the site and her upcoming novel
Welcome to Polygon Exit Interviews, a series of chats with my excellent former Polygon employees who were laid off (along with me) when Valnet purchased the website from Vox Media May 1. We’re talking about how these talented people got to Polygon, what they did in their time there, and what they hope is next. I’ll publish most of these in the next few weeks, which will likely result in a higher-than-usual cadence for this newsletter this month.
Next up: Petrana Radulovic, a reporter on the entertainment team. One of the longest-tenured Polygon staff members, nobody understood the publication’s voice better than Petrana, whether she was writing about anime, fandom ships, or bizarre costuming choices in movies that should know better. An expert in all things Disney, theme parks, and young adult fantasy franchises, Petrana never failed to inject her personality and voice into everything she wrote, giving Polygon a distinct identity that would not have existed without her.
Tell me about your pre-Polygon background.
Polygon was my second internship out of college, and I'm super blessed that I got hired as an employee right after that. Before that, I was at Mashable as a culture intern. I did some fun stuff there, but also it was a lot of, hey, this video went viral, write it up. I feel like everyone has to put their time in for that.
When did you first join Polygon, and what do you remember about joining?
It was in 2018. I applied for the internship, and I was a little hesitant, because as someone who does love games, I never really considered myself a “gamer.” I didn't grow up playing a lot of video games. But I had a bunch of friends who reassured me. They were like Oh my god, I love their coverage, it’s great. I found myself reading Polygon a lot, especially while I was an intern at Mashable looking for other stories. I was excited to apply. And I was so fortunate that Chelsea Stark, who had been hiring for the intern roles, was a Mashable alum, so my Mashable editor put in a good word for me.
I remember I got into my first video interview, and I felt like I was bungling it. But then Allegra Frank – who has since left Polygon, she's now at the Atlantic – came into the call. She seemed like the coolest person in the world to me. Immediately I felt very comfortable with her, and she was just so friendly and approachable. And then Chelsea got pizza for me and the other intern, and everyone hung out. It was just such a good vibe that I didn't have at Mashable.
When I got the full-time offer, I was so jazzed and excited because I didn't get hired from Mashable. That was kind of a bit of a pain point for me, even though, in retrospect, I'm so glad, because this was definitely a better fit. I wouldn't say I had always wanted to do this, but that’s because I didn't even know it was a possibility to be able to write about movies and TV and games in this way. And so I felt like I had been discovering that this is exactly what I want to be doing.
Can you run me through your history at Polygon – what roles you had, and what each entailed?
I started off as a junior entertainment reporter. We never really had a huge entertainment team, but it was particularly tiny back then. I was doing a lot of stuff. This was back also when we were more news-focused. And that was an era where we were told that within the first three seconds of a trailer going live, we need to have it on the site. So that was a little stressful when I was super news-heavy, but at the same time still was being pushed to do longer reported things.
A couple years in, I was a little disgruntled that I still had the junior in my title – literally, no one else on the team had junior in their title. So I asked. I didn't even want a promotion at that point, I just wanted a title change. So they changed it to entertainment news writer, which honestly was more accurate of what I was doing at the time. I definitely was more news-focused in those early days, even though I did try to do more reported things. We also had a proper entertainment reporter, Karen Han, so I was always second-string on doing reviews and stuff, which was fine at that stage. And then when she left, I got promoted to entertainment reporter, and that's when I was more aggressively going after stories I wanted. That's when I started doing my Beloved Failures series, and more analysis.
I had always been drawn to animated movies, and those were the reviews that no one else was taking. It’s something I was passionate about and I liked. But when I started at Polygon, I had not watched anime before. That's something I picked up while there. For me, it was always about just trying to engage with things from a different perspective than I was used to seeing on gamer and geek sites, and also bringing things people are excited about in that same passionate fandom way, but that I don't see covered. I always said I want to cover what the teen girls on Tumblr are posting about. I was definitely big on us needing to cover Shadow and Bone from the get go, before almost anyone else on staff knew what those books were. I also wanted to bring in Jane Austen adaptations and rom-coms and stuff, because there is a passionate fandom behind all of those things, even if you don't usually see them covered in that way.
What’s one thing you’re proud of from your time at Polygon?
Definitely Beloved Animated Failures. That was literally born out of Oh, my God, it's the deep pandemic, we have nothing to do right now. It was supposed to be a short recurring column about why I think this film rocks and why it didn’t land in that moment. But then it became more of a reported thing, which was really fun. I had such a good time tracking down and talking to behind-the-scenes people. Especially with movies that didn't do well but have since had a passionate fan base — people get really excited to talk about those things. I finished it off with Lilo and Stitch, which was a success, but it was such a cool interview to do, because both the directors talked with me for a very long time, and it was just so fun. The Atlantis one, too. I got so many people willing to talk. They told me about this fan Facebook group they all joined – the writer, producer, director – and it took on a life of its own. So I ended up talking to the moderator of that Facebook group, too. That was one of the rare ones that had a true happy ending, in that all of the people involved were very much aware of the love that movie had gotten.
There was also this essay that I wrote about the live-action Mulan, which was a little bit of a personal essay, a little bit of a research/reported thing, a little bit of critical analysis about the haircut scene.
I’m also just super thankful for my time at Polygon in general. I met so many cool people. And thank you to the Vox Media Union! Support your unions!
I always enjoyed seeing fandom groups interacting with your work and talking about it in their networks. Do you have any favorite stories?
The coolest one was when I wrote about Goncharov, that fake Martin Scorsese movie people made up on Tumblr. It was surreal. I wrote a section that was what that back of the DVD cover would be. And someone had taken that text, printed it out, and put it in a fake Goncharov case. Then they put it on a shelf at their local library, which was absolutely awesome. That’s the coolest thing that’s happened to something I’ve written, out in the wild. On Tumblr, people were like Oh no, someone leaked it. And then I saw people like Oh, it’s okay if it was Petrana, she’s one of us.
Everyone pitched in across sections at Polygon. What’s a time where you did something outside of your core job responsibilities that you enjoyed?
I did some video stuff, which was always really fun, especially [charity stream] Polygonathon. And any time we got to play a cool board game on Overboard was fun. And writing about games: One of my favorites was when Baldur’s Gate 3 came out, I had felt like I was more engaged with my D&D campaign because I can ask for checks I never really thought about. I ended up talking to a lot of people, and especially DMs, who told me Yeah, my players are all shoving each other now, which was really fun. One of my DMs is a game developer, so he was like, Oh yeah, I'll talk your ear off about how the mechanics within the game lead itself to helping you understand the rules more intuitively. That was just a really fun piece to put together.
Do you have a favorite Polygon story or video by someone else?
Definitely Nicole Carpenter's Barbie video game piece, that was fantastic. I know everyone's gonna say this, but Hayseed. Ana’s also fantastic, and I loved her piece about the manga section at Barnes & Noble.
What do you think is the biggest misconception that people outside the industry have about entertainment journalism?
It gets a little draining to have to watch stuff and, in the back of your mind, think shit, I gotta turn this into a post. I'm looking forward to disconnecting from that part a bit. You feel that weird guilt when you're playing something older or watching something older, where you're like, I need to be actually watching whatever is coming out this week, instead of this old anime that I want to catch up on. Everyone's like, wow, you have such a cool job. And you know what? It is, it is really fun. But also at the same time, you're like, Oh, now my fun is work.
What’s your wish for the future of entertainment journalism or digital media?
I think that CEOs should not be in charge of things. Admittedly, I don't know a lot about worker-owned media. I support them all, and I don't know if I have it in me to do that myself, but I do want to see more of that. I just want to see less algorithm chasing. I hate that we're all beholden to Google's algorithm and to social media networks. I want an organic way to see news and read news. I want people to go to their favorite websites again. I want less centralization of the web. I've missed the days when it was a bunch of cool, quirky websites that you would check. And as much as I do love video content, I want to read stories. I have space in me for maybe one two-hour video essay a month. I absolutely respect it, but people need to read again.
What’s next for you?
Weirdly enough, this coincided with some good news for me. I was accepted to this pretty cool and prestigious fiction writing workshop for this YA novel that I’ve been working on for a while, which was super exciting. It felt like a sign from the universe that maybe it’s time to focus on my creative goals instead.
It’s a sci-fi novel that takes place in a tiny desert town. Think Welcome to Night Vale vibes, but it's actually inspired by The Sims 2’s Strangetown Neighborhood. It's about a world where alien abductions are common occurrences, to the point where they’re like nuisances, like extreme weather events, and people usually return from them. My main character is the daughter of a military leader in charge of defending from the alien invasion. She moves to this desert town, and one of her classmates gets abducted, but he doesn't return, which is a huge thing, because that doesn't happen. She goes on a quest to find out what's up, and she learns that everything she's known or been told about aliens is not actually true. There's a layer of not listening to what the government tells you, unpacking what you've been told your whole life, and meeting new people and learning different perspectives. But also there's aliens and secret government research facilities and psychics and all that fun stuff.
When I came to New York, fresh out of college, my goal was to do creative writing, and I fell into [entertainment journalism] instead. I’m super thankful for that, because the entirety of my 20s was this job, and I felt like I really found my own voice at Polygon. I don't know exactly what the future holds, but I think I'm going to prioritize a lot of my creative endeavors for now and see what happens from there. I think it'll be a good way to just reset my own thinking about my work and what I want to do.
Where can people follow you and your work, as this project continues?
I’m on BlueSky @Petrana.bsky.social. I snagged that because Petrana on Twitter was taken by someone whose name was Petra, and I was really mad about that. You can also find me on Tumblr. I should have a website update soon with my portfolio, whenever the heck I put that together.