New York magazine announced on Monday that it had “parted ways” with Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi following her affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — despite both insisting that she did “nothing wrong.”
The announcement came just a month after it was revealed that Nuzzi, 31, had a digital affair with the 70-year-old married Kennedy scion, calling into question the reporting she’d done on the 2024 election since profiling the ex-presidential candidate last year for the magazine.
“Last month, the magazine enlisted the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine to review Olivia Nuzzi’s work during the 2024 campaign,” the magazine said in a statement. “They reached the same conclusion as the magazine’s initial internal review of her published work, finding no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias.
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“Nevertheless, the magazine and Nuzzi agreed that the best course forward is to part ways. Nuzzi is a uniquely talented writer and we have been proud to publish her work over her nearly eight years as our Washington Correspondent. We wish her the best,” the outlet added.
Nuzzi, who was engaged to fellow reporter Ryan Lizza at the time of the affair, had been on leave while the magazine investigated her tryst with Kennedy. As the probe progressed, countless details of the relationship emerged, revealing everything from how they reportedly conducted their affair (over FaceTime, according to one report) to the graphic nature of the alleged infatuation.
The bombshell disclosures launched a monthlong media circus that enveloped two publications, a pending domestic violence case against her ex Lizza, and potentially an FBI investigation—all in the final days before the 2024 election.
New York editor David Haskell told staff in a memo he was “happy that the recently completed external review agreed with our initial conclusion that her reporting was sound and needs no correction.”
Still, he said, “her actions created at the very least the appearance of a conflict and violated the policies we have in place to protect our readers’ trust and a culture of honesty and respect in our newsroom.”
“I will always be proud of the inimitable body of work she published in our pages over nearly eight years, and I wish her nothing but success in the future,” he wrote.
Nuzzi’s lawyer Ari Wilkenfeld said Nuzzi “is gratified though not surprised that two different investigations have determined that her reporting on the 2024 campaign was sound and that she did nothing wrong.”
“For nearly eight years, she consistently produced critically celebrated and hugely popular journalism in her capacity as the Washington Correspondent for New York Magazine,” Wilkenfeld said in a statement. “She is grateful for the editors, fact checkers, and artists with whom she worked and to the readers who have supported her with their time, subscriptions, and engagement. She looks forward to the next chapter of her career.”
The decision ends a weeks-long question over the state of Nuzzi’s employment, which many speculated would likely end over the public spectacle of it all even if the legal review found no evidence of bias in her work.
The scandal risks impacting the political credibility of the magazine, long the more provincial counterpart to The New Yorker, as it seeks to cover the election in its crucial and final two weeks minus its star political reporter.
New York announced the news the same day it debuted its massive Power Issue, somehow choosing to overshadow the question of whether the media industry can survive by commenting on the survival of its star reporter‘s employment.
“It’s been hanging over this place, and it’s good to have some closure,” a New York staffer told the Daily Beast. They theorized that in the end, it might not have been her romantic entanglements that led to her departure: “You don’t lie to your boss. Your boss gets mad at you if you lie to them.”
It does not, however, remove Nuzzi’s name from headlines. Nuzzi still has a temporary protective order against Lizza, Politico‘s chief Washington correspondent, after she accused him of of leaking the details of the affair to the magazine; blackmailing her to force her to stay in their relationship; and threatening her with violence. The claims, which Lizza has forcefully denied, go in front of a Washington, D.C. court next month. (Lizza has been on leave for weeks. Politico would not comment on the state of its investigation into him and whether Nuzzi’s departure would impact it.)
For his part, Lizza has denied her characterization of their break-up, claiming that her allegations are “disgraceful” and part of a “coordinated defamation campaign” against him. His legal response included vivid allegations about the relationship, including the idea that Kennedy told Nuzzi he wanted to “impregnate” her.
The sordid case gripped media circles' attention for the last month, revealing sultry details behind the lives of two prominent reporters who publicly flaunted their relationship in front of cameras for years. It also called into question the ethics of establishing a romantic relationship with a reporting subject—primarily a married one in Kennedy, known for his own reported sexual proclivities and affairs—and hiding it from her bosses, as The Daily Beast exclusively reported last month.
Nuzzi has remained relatively quiet outside of court appearances, making few public statements. She does, however, appear to see a comeback in her future, which perhaps explains her first public appearance earlier this month at an event for the fashion line Argent.
The event, according to Page Six, featured the likes of House of Cards star Kate Mara, journalist Lisa Ling, and Academy Award-winning director Ava DuVernay—star-studded associations for a person whose story is worthy of an adaptation in its own right.
