Vanity Fair said Friday that it is cutting ties with journalist Olivia Nuzzi amid the fallout from new allegations from her former fiancé about the extent of her inappropriate relationships with her high-profile sources, including former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the secretary of health and human services.
The Condé Nast-owned magazine hired Nuzzi in September as its West Coast editor, a contract role that was not a full-time employment. Only one article has since been published under her byline: an excerpt from her recently released memoir, “American Canto,” which debuted to largely negative reviews.
“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,” spokespeople for Vanity Fair and Nuzzi said in a joint statement.
“I love Vanity Fair and this decision was made out of respect for the staff and faith in the future of the publication,” Nuzzi said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Last year, New York Magazine said it would “part ways” with Nuzzi, the publication’s Washington correspondent, after she admitted to having an improper relationship with Kennedy, then a presidential candidate and a source.
The magazine conducted a review of her work and hired an outside law firm to do the same. Neither found inaccuracies or evidence of bias.
Since Vanity Fair hired Nuzzi in September as its West Coast editor, she has been a central figure in an ongoing public relations fiasco. Ryan Lizza, Nuzzi’s former fiancé, has made myriad accusations in a sprawling and sometimes lurid series of articles published in his Substack newsletter, Telos News, about the scope and nature of Nuzzi’s alleged acts of journalistic malfeasance. (Lizza himself was fired from the New Yorker in 2017 for an unspecified sexual misconduct allegation.)
In recent weeks, Lizza has alleged that Nuzzi had a previous inappropriate relationship with a source, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who ran for president in the 2020 election. Lizza also detailed allegations that Nuzzi conducted opposition research for Kennedy and quashed negative stories about him.
Nuzzi’s book is largely about her relationship during the 2024 presidential campaign with a person she refers to as “the politician.” She has not commented on the allegations regarding Sanford.
In an email to staff Friday, obtained by The Post, Vanity Fair’s global editorial director Mark Guiducci said he and Nuzzi agreed that a parting of ways was the best course of action.
“I’m writing to share that Olivia and I have agreed that it is in the magazine’s best interest for her not to continue as West Coast Editor after her contract expires at the end of the year,” he wrote. “There’s so much good journalism underway here and we have so much momentum — oh, and a big party to plan — and I don’t want anything to distract us from all of that.”
Anne Branigin contributed to this report.
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