While a visiting professor at
Whitman College, Petersen began writing about popular culture topics for online news and entertainment sites (including the Scandals of Classic Hollywood series at the
Hairpin) and found that she enjoyed non-academic writing. In May 2014 she moved to New York to write for
BuzzFeed News. She also authored her first book, the non-fiction
Scandals of Classic Hollywood, based on her
Hairpin series. Informed by her scholarship, she continued to write about celebrities throughout her time at
BuzzFeed and
BuzzFeed News, including
Adam Driver,
Keira Knightley,
Taylor Kitsch,
Charlize Theron,
Justin Timberlake,
Kate Hudson,
Margot Robbie,
Jennifer Aniston, and
Kim Kardashian. In 2017, Petersen wrote a piece about actor
Armie Hammer, "Ten Long Years of Trying to Make Armie Hammer Happen", analyzing Hammer's star image from 2007 to 2017. The article became controversial and provoked criticism and backlash from Hammer, film industry figures, and other journalists. Subsequently, Petersen received online harassment. Her work at
BuzzFeed was not limited to celebrities. She reported on the
COVID-19 pandemic,
student loans,
Native Americans voting in elections, expanding
Medicaid,
refugee resettlement, religion, the
Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases, and
bachelorette parties. Being a native of Lewiston, Idaho, she was credited with being able to bring a Western small town and rural perspective to a national audience, on issues such as
Antifa,
gun politics,
2017 Montana's at-large congressional district special election's relation with national politics, and the
COVID-19 anti-lockdown protests in the United States. In 2019, Petersen wrote a piece on
millennial burnout for
BuzzFeed News that has had over 7 million views. She then expanded that piece into a book that was published in 2020, ''Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation''. In August 2020, she quit her job at
Buzzfeed News to pursue her newsletter Culture Study as a full-time venture. Along with her partner Charlie Warzel, she wrote the book
Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, published in December 2021. A 2024
Forbes profile described Petersen as "the voice of a micro-generation," those born between 1977-1985. The piece reported that Culture Study is "one of Substack’s top newsletters," with 184,000 subscribers. From October 2022 to October 2023, Petersen hosted the Work Appropriate podcast on the
Crooked Media podcast network. She launched a podcast, Culture Study, in December 2023. ==Personal life==