Vanity Fair Will Let Olivia Nuzzi’s Contract Expire After Ex-Fiancé Alleges Ethics Violations: Report

The scandal-plagued scribe called a series of essays from Ryan Lizza, ‘obsessive and violating fiction-slash-revenge porn.”

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for CBS News
Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza attend a CBS News party following the White House Correspondents' Dinner at Washington, D.C., on April 29, 2023. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for CBS News

Olivia Nuzzi is finding herself under investigation by her employer once again, but this time it’s the brass at Vanity Fair who are reportedly waiting for her short-term contract to expire so she can be quietly erased from the masthead as quickly as she was placed there.

It’s been just two weeks since the magazine published an excerpt of her new book, “American Canto,” which had its full release on Tuesday. But the fallout has apparently been too much for executives at Condé Nast, who have become concerned about salacious allegations made against the scribe by her ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, in series of online essays.

The company is conducting a review of the work performed by Ms. Nuzzi for Vanity Fair since she signed on as its West Coast editor in September, according to a number of well-placed sources who spoke with Semafor.

The insiders told the website’s Max Tani that Condé Nast executives are deeply disturbed by Mr. Lizza’s allegations. They said the review is much more narrow in scope than the one conducted last year by her former employer, New York Magazine, and is contingent on what subsequent essays will be published by Mr. Lizza.

In a series of writings published to his Substack newsletter, Telos News, Mr. Lizza has been slowly airing sordid details of Ms. Nuzzi’s alleged relationship with a then presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

In addition to claiming Ms. Nuzzi committed one of the biggest ethical transgressions a journalist can commit — getting into a romantic relationship with a source and then using her access to help them gain political advantage — he also accuses her of  having an adulterous affair with another top political figure.

In the first part of his series, Mr. Lizza recounted how he discovered that she was carrying on in an illicit relationship with a former South Carolina governor and congressman, Mark Sanford.

Ms. Nuzzi had stayed relatively quiet about Mr. Lizza’s articles until an interview published on Tuesday in the Substack newsletter, Feed Me, in which called them “obsessive and violating fiction-slash-revenge porn.”

“The allegations, made by a man I met when I was 19 years old, are another attempt to harass, humiliate, and harm me until I am as destroyed as he seems to be,” she said in a response to one question from a Feed Me reader. “If he possessed any explosive information in the public interest, the only responsible way to handle that information would be to quietly pass it off to an outlet free of his conflicts.” 

“There is no glory in that, though, and no subscribers.”

The drama surrounding his former relationship with Ms. Nuzzi seems to have paid off for Mr. Lizza. Telos News has shot up on Substack’s chart of top subscriptions, ranking as the 38th most popular politics newsletter on the platform as of Saturday.

The ugly break-up of the two journalists happened earlier this year but resurfaced when The New York Times published a softball interview with Ms. Nuzzi, leading her former fiancé to publish his claims while accusing her of  violating a non-disclosure understanding.

“Unfortunately, silence no longer seems advisable or even possible,” he wrote on November 17.

Despite all the interest generated by the media, “American Canto” already appears to be suffering from slumping sales.

The book has garnered no advance sales and was ranked at 13,600 on Amazon’s list, according to a recent report from Showbiz 411.


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