Editor’s note: “Beat the Press” returns today with a look at one of the biggest journalism scandals in years. New York magazine sent star political reporter Olivia Nuzzi packing last year after news broke that Nuzzi had carried on a secret “sexting affair” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amid the heated 2024 presidential campaign.
Until a few weeks ago, Nuzzi appeared to be on the cusp of a comeback, having landed a job as Vanity Fair’s West Coast editor. Then ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza struck. In a series of Substack posts, the former top Politico reporter published lurid and troubling details of Nuzzi’s affair with RFK Jr. while accusing her of violating just about every standard there is in journalism. Last Friday, shortly after we finished taping “Beat the Press,” Vanity Fair and Nuzzi released a joint statement saying they had agreed to part ways at year’s end. Meanwhile, Nuzzi’s book on her affair, “American Canto,” has been savaged in the press for its wretched writing and for promising to tell all and then failing to do so.
Edited transcript of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney.”
I’m Emily Rooney, host of Beat the Press on Contrarian Boston.
Joining me today, of course, are Contrarian Boston editor and publisher, Scott Van Voorhis, and my old Beat the Press colleague, Dan Kennedy, a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and publisher of Media Nation.
All right, we’re going to get going. Today, we’re just going to limit this to just one discussion, and it’s the endlessly fascinating tale of two journalists and one high-profile presidential candidate and the unraveling of at least one romance that we know of for sure and possibly two.
All right, Olivia Nuzzi was an up and coming star at New York Magazine.
She was living with another high profile journalist, Ryan Lizza, one-time chief political correspondent for Politico.
He and Olivia Nuzzi lived together.
Nuzzi wrote a profile of RFK and subsequently got romantically involved with him.
Allegedly, it was just sexting and that kind of stuff, no physical contact.
But Lizzo found out, exposed her.
She then got canned at the magazine.
They broke up.
Now Olivia Nuzzi has a book out, American Canto, which is allegedly sort of a tell-all.
I haven’t read it yet.
I’ve read only the excerpts.
So, Dan, starting with you, this has touched a nerve in journalism circles for many reasons, you know, just a grave ethical breach, getting involved with a source, angling for more favorable coverage for RFK Jr. while she was writing this, piece on him, and then afterwards, contacting people, on his behalf, and then Lizza,her ex-boyfriend, turning her in and revealing all these emails that she exchanged between RFK Jr.
Dan Kennedy: I think what fascinates me about this story is that when you say it’s got legs, it’s had legs for 15 months now.
You know, when this story broke, the ethical breaches that were exposed were just really kind of shocking.
I mean, he...
She had had this non-touching sexual affair with RFK Jr. and then went off and wrote a devastating profile of Joe Biden that I thought was very good.
But I didn’t realize she was carrying water for her boyfriend at the time.
And then she wrote an oddly sympathetic profile of Trump at a time when Kennedy was trying to get hired to a high-level position.
So you’d think that would be enough and that would be the last we would hear of anyof these people. But here we go again.
Scott Van Voorhis: Yeah, it’s really a crazy, crazy story. And it sounds like, Dan, you’re shocked that maybe standards have changed or that, I don’t know, maybe it’s the Trump effect where things just don’t stick the same way.
For example, Nuzzi got a big profile a couple weeks ago in the New York Times. They had a video of her riding in a convertible with a wind in her hair and really sympathetic.
But I was thinking, well, if your reporter did this - you’re working for the Times and was dating somebody secretly that you are covering, you would be fired.
It wasn’t glowing, but it was pretty sympathetic.
So where are the standards, or are there any standards anymore, especially if it’s celebrity journalism?
Emily Rooney: Yeah, she got rehired. Olivia Nuzi gets rehired at the West Coast Vanity Fair office. She’s got a big job there. Now this book comes out - “American Canto” - and you’ve got to be thinking, now, what are they thinking at Vanity Fair? Do they think, oh, it’s just fine, it’s just going to draw eyeballs to their magazine?
Or are they thinking...Because the book is, again, I haven’t read it, but I did read the excerpts. You know, apparently there are no chapters. It just meanders all over the place. She never refers to RFK by name. She just says “the politician.”
So and there’s no apology.
Dan Kennedy: No, there isn’t. And I read the excerpt as well. She said that she wrote it on her iPhone while walking in the woods.
I have to say I thought that the excerpt was the single worst piece of published writing I’ve ever seen in my life.
It was just shockingly bad.
And if that’s any indication of what the rest of the book is like, I guess it is understandable that it’s not selling at all.
I want to push back a little bit on that New York Times profile.
I think I’m a real outlier here because I’ve seen a lot of criticism for how favorable it was. I thought in its own way, it was devastating.
I said, This is just really, really bad. And if you look back over the last few weeks,
I think that Times profile kind of kicked off the downward spiral that she’s on now.
Scott Van Voorhis:
That is really interesting, that it may not have had the effect that some people fear it had … setting her up as this sort of like almost quasi-celebrity and actually highlighting her challenges.
I mean, there is a pathetic element to it. I mean, she’s, you know, had kind of had a troubled life and involved, there’s some issues there, clearly, if you read between the lines.
I read the comments section under the Times story. It was actually a pretty good discussion. I think there were probably journalists weighing in. So it’s pretty nuanced.
And some people are really into it - the Nuzzi scandal - but other people are like yeah -who is she? Okay i mentioned this to my wife - her reponse was, Who is she?
It’s a strange thing - I mean people in journalism know about it because it’s kind of a celebrity story …
Emily Rooney: Ty Burr the former movie critic for The Globe, wrote a hilarious satire about it, the new standards in journalism, which is, sleep with your source and make sure you do catch and kill stories.
Anyway, I don’t want to let Ryan Lizza off the hook on this either.
I mean, I understand, you know, he was spurned and all of that.
But recently, he’s been releasing these emails.
I mean, like, I don’t even want to talk about what fletching is, what he was talking about these these. these interactions they were having on over, you know, text messages.
And it certainly sounded like they had a physical relationship to me.
I’m not saying I know for sure, but, meanwhile, he’s turning this woman in,
In a way that is really vile. I mean, and, and, and he’s still holding down a job.
Dan Kennedy: Well, first of all, Ryan Lizza is not holding down a job.
He has not worked since he left Politico.
Emily Rooney:
Doesn’t he have like freelance gigs and all that?
Dan Kennedy: Well, he’s just self-publishing on Substack. I don’t know that anybody is picking up his pieces.
And let’s not forget that the reason he was at Politico was that he was forced to leave the New Yorker as the result of some sort of Me Too investigation.
So, you know, he’s got a pretty checkered past as well.
Emily Rooney: But what do you think of him releasing all these emails?
Dan Kennedy: Oh, it’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. And I’ve seen people say on social media, oh, he should have done this months ago.
It could have changed the course of the election.
No, it wouldn’t have changed the course of the election. It adds some details to what we already knew.
The details that he’s adding are not things that I necessarily want to know, including Bobby Kennedy’s talents as a poet, which I’ll just leave at that.
Emily Rooney: Exactly. All right.
Got any final thoughts on this, Scott?
Scott Van Voorhis:
Yeah, no, I agree. He - Lizza - has kind of gotten off the hook with this whole thing.
He’s self-publishing - he has something called Telos News.
I looked at it. It’s kind of interesting, but there’s a lot of people in that lane, the Washington political lane right now.
So we’ll see how he does.
He’s probably getting lots of hits, though. He put the first tell-all piece - it was 1,800 words - out for free, and now he’s charging for the rest.
If that’s what he’s going to offer, though, at some point you’ll be like okay, I don’t really want to know any more about this.
Emily Rooney:
Well, I thought it was pretty interesting. He did claim that Olivia Nuzzi also had an affair with former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, which was, of course, believable, because he has a track record of that as well, but
She didn’t deny it.
And as far as I know, Mark Sanford has not denied it.
So it’s all pretty messy.
So I think the next shoe to drop is probably going to be Vanity Fair.
But what do you think, Dan?
Dan Kennedy: Yeah, well, there are now reports in Semaphore and Oliver Darcy’s status project and elsewhere that she’s actually on a temporary contract with Vanity Fair that expires at the end of December.
And that will probably be it. She probably won’t be back.
So, you know, her career had been in ruins a year ago. And sadly for her, it looks like it is again.
Emily Rooney: The book was supposed to be, some kind of a rehabilitation tour, but I think it’s flopped.
By the way, I don’t think anybody said, I’ve been reading her off and on for years. I thought she was terrific.
I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we talk about this.
