Vanity Fair parts ways with Olivia Nuzzi amid Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversy

Audio By Carbonatix

NEW YORK (AP) — Vanity Fair is parting ways with West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi amid ongoing controversy over her relationship with profile subject Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while she was the Washington correspondent for New York magazine.

A joint statement from the magazine and Nuzzi Friday said they “have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.” She had been hired as its West Coast editor in September.

Nuzzi, 32, had been a star reporter for New York magazine known for colorfully written political profiles until last fall, when it was revealed she had an intense personal relationship with Kennedy, now head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Nuzzi was fired by New York for not disclosing her relationship.

This fall, she wrote a memoir, “American Canto,” that refers to Kennedy as “The Politician.” It was excerpted in Vanity Fair but simultaneously, Nuzzi's former fiancee, journalist Ryan Lizza, wrote a series of Substack posts with embarrassing revelations.

The case quickly gripped media insiders as Lizza alleged that Nuzzi had an affair with another profile subject and had given Kennedy political advice, both considered off limits for journalists. Lizza even posted salacious, cringeworthy text messages from Kennedy to Nuzzi that he had intercepted.

Friday's announcement came only days after the publication of “American Canto,” disdained by critics and apparently of little interest to the reading public. The book ranked just 6,094 on Amazon.com's bestseller list as of Friday afternoon.

Critics were harsh: “A tell-all memoir? Ha. This is a tell-nothing memoir,” wrote Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.