Vanity Fair has parted ways with writer and West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi, ending a short-lived arrangement that was quickly engulfed in scandal over a steady drumbeat of both admitted and alleged journalistic ethical violations.
“Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year,” the magazine and a spokesperson for Nuzzi said in a joint statement.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the exit.
The “American Canto” author joined the Condé Nast publication as West Coast Editor in September, a year after being fired from New York magazine after her inappropriate relationship Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came to light. She had profiled then-presidential candidate Kennedy for the magazine, where she was also covering the 2024 election. At Vanity Fair, she was tasked with editing stories on the “events, industries, and culture of the Pacific region,” as well as writing for the magazine.
Global editorial director Mark Guiducci, who took the reins of Vanity Fair in June, made a splash by hiring Nuzzi and touted her and other new staff additions as upholding the magazine’s commitment to “original, provocative journalism.”
“We have been seeking out a certain fearlessness — people with a point of view, able to express it in both substance and style,” Guiducci said. “I can say that every one of our new colleagues has that quality.”
But Nuzzi’s sole byline in the magazine was for an excerpt of “American Canto,” which documented elements of her relationship with Kennedy and her life in California. The excerpt, along with a glowing New York Times profile that ran just before, was widely panned.
Hours after the excerpt was published, Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, journalist Ryan Lizza, began a tell-all series on Substack that accused Nuzzi of various journalistic and personal transgressions. Those accusations ranged from an alleged affair with former presidential candidate Mark Sanford (which Sanford has not commented on) to Nuzzi working on behalf of Kennedy to kill negative news stories and burnish his reputation. Nuzzi has dismissed Lizza’s claims as a form of “obsessive and violating fan fiction-slash-revenge porn,” while Lizza has said that “telling the truth is not harassment.”
Still, the allegations disturbed Vanity Fair enough to re-examine its professional relationship with her. A spokesperson for the outlet had told TheWrap in November that they “were taken by surprise” by Lizza’s claims and were “looking at all the facts.”
Nuzzi said in a Q&A with Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me on Tuesday that, while she remained shocked by Lizza actively promoting the story in what she called a campaign of “abuse and harassment,” she didn’t mind the discussions around her ethical lapse with Kennedy.
“I told the truth in this book in a way that doesn’t do me any favors but that I knew was important,” she wrote. “I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with a book that was any kind of effort to spin on my own behalf. There existed no good set of facts. I made a mistake.”
