Former political journalist Olivia Nuzzi’s tenure at Vanity Fair has come to an end, a year after reports of her alleged relationship with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. upended her career.
Vanity Fair and a spokesperson for “American Canto” author Nuzzi said in a joint statement shared Friday that they “mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.” Vanity Fair appointed Nuzzi its West Coast editor in September.
Prior to Vanity Fair, Nuzzi was a Washington correspondent for New York Magazine from 2017 to 2024. Her tenure at the outlet came to a screeching halt after reports of her alleged romance with Kennedy, 71, surfaced last year. Nuzzi, 32, profiled Kennedy (who is married to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines) in 2023 amid his presidential campaign. Nuzzi was engaged to former New Yorker political journalist Ryan Lizza from 2022 to 2024.
After details of Nuzzi and Kennedy’s alleged affair (the politician has denied his involvement) went viral, New York Magazine told readers in a statement that the writer acknowledged she had “engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject.” There was a “violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts and disclosures,” the outlet said.
Though the statement said an internal investigation found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias,” the magazine placed Nuzzi on leave. “We regret this violation of our readers’ trust,” the September 2024 statement said.
Nuzzi and New York Magazine officially parted ways in October 2024.
The scandal and its fallout is at the center of Nuzzi’s new memoir, “American Canto,” released Tuesday. In her review for The Times, Leigh Haber writes Nuzzi “has succeeded brilliantly in her wish not to be understood.”
“Nuzzi emerges less as someone who, in the words of her publisher, ‘walked through hell and she took notes,’” Haber adds, “but as a woman whose version of the events that laid her low remain stubbornly unprocessed — as blurry and borderless as the book itself.”
The post Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi, journalist who had alleged affair with RFK Jr., part ways appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
