Olivia Nuzzi, once hailed as a rising star in American political journalism, has found herself at the center of a public and professional maelstrom that has upended her career and reputation. The storm reached its peak in early December 2025, when Condé Nast, the parent company of Vanity Fair, confirmed that the magazine and Nuzzi had mutually agreed to let her contract expire at the end of the year, as reported by multiple outlets including The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press. The decision came just days after the publication of Nuzzi’s much-anticipated memoir, American Canto, which was intended to mark her return to the public eye but instead intensified the scrutiny surrounding her conduct as a journalist.
Nuzzi’s fall from grace began in the fall of 2024, when she was dismissed from her position as Washington correspondent for New York magazine. The cause: revelations of a personal and, as later confirmed by Nuzzi herself, improper relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—then a presidential candidate and now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services—whom she was actively covering at the time. According to Vanity Fair, this breach of journalistic ethics was a turning point, casting a shadow over Nuzzi’s previous accomplishments, which included high-profile interviews with figures such as Donald Trump and Kennedy himself.
Despite the controversy, Nuzzi was hired as Vanity Fair’s West Coast editor in September 2025. Her tenure, however, was brief and fraught with tension. The only piece she published for the magazine was an excerpt from American Canto, a memoir that sought to address, if not entirely reckon with, her tumultuous recent years. As The Atlantic bluntly put it, the book was less a “tell-all” and more a “tell-nothing memoir,” criticized for its elliptical, embellished language and lack of genuine transparency regarding the central scandal.
On the day American Canto hit the shelves, Nuzzi took to Instagram with a post that mixed gallows humor and self-awareness. Titled “Signs Your Book Rollout Has Gone Awry,” her list included, “Your agents text you unprompted with no elaboration, ‘I love you,’” and “Monica Lewinsky reaches out to check on your mental health.” She captioned the post simply: “American Canto is out today and the psychosis is mass.” This moment of dark levity resonated widely, suggesting Nuzzi was painfully aware of the chaos swirling around her.
The memoir’s release, far from rehabilitating Nuzzi’s reputation, seemed only to deepen the controversy. Critics, including those at Vanity Fair itself, noted that while Nuzzi’s prose had shifted from her earlier journalistic style, the book failed to grapple meaningfully with questions of accountability. “It’s not demure, it’s self-flattering,” the magazine observed, arguing that the memoir skirted the substance of her mistakes and misunderstood the demands of public scrutiny.
Adding fuel to the fire was Nuzzi’s former fiancé, political journalist Ryan Lizza, who launched a series of explosive Substack posts during the memoir’s rollout. Lizza accused Nuzzi of unethical conduct beyond her relationship with Kennedy, alleging that she had advised Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign and attempted to suppress negative stories about him. He further claimed that Nuzzi had an inappropriate relationship with another reporting subject, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. In a pointed statement to The Wall Street Journal, Lizza said, “Telling the truth is not harassment and accountability is not an ax, though I understand why Olivia finds it unpleasant to be confronted with her treachery and betrayal.”
Nuzzi, for her part, has vehemently denied the additional allegations. Through her attorney, Ari Wilkenfeld, she stated to The Wall Street Journal, “In American Canto, Ms. Nuzzi discusses the only instance in her long career as a journalist in which she had an improper relationship with someone she was covering.” Nuzzi dismissed Lizza’s campaign as “obsessive and violating fan fiction-slash-revenge porn.” Representatives for Kennedy, married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014, have also denied any affair with Nuzzi, declining to comment further to the press.
In a rare moment of candor, Nuzzi admitted on The Bulwark podcast to crossing ethical boundaries. “I think shame is really important,” she said. “I did something wrong. Those ethics rules exist for a reason. They’re really good rules. And I had violated that.” Yet, as Vanity Fair and other critics have pointed out, American Canto largely sidesteps a full reckoning with the consequences of those violations.
The saga has become emblematic of broader tensions in the media landscape, with Vanity Fair framing it as a cautionary tale about the blurring of lines between traditional journalism and influencer culture. “Every word these two publish puts them further away from classical reportage and closer to the role of influencer,” the magazine warned, highlighting the challenges faced by media institutions as high-profile personalities chase visibility at the expense of professional boundaries.
For Nuzzi, the professional consequences have been swift and severe. Vanity Fair’s decision to part ways was announced in a terse joint statement: “Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.” The fallout has left Nuzzi without a clear path forward. She has stated she does not intend to return to political reporting but has offered little insight into her future plans.
Meanwhile, the literary ambitions that fueled her comeback have fallen flat. As of December 6, 2025, American Canto languished at 6,094 on Amazon’s bestseller list, its critical reception as chilly as the professional climate Nuzzi now faces. The book’s attempt to recast her narrative has instead become a stark illustration of the perils awaiting those who cross ethical lines in the glare of public scrutiny.
In the end, Nuzzi’s own words—shared on social media as her memoir launched—seem to capture the moment best: “The psychosis is mass.” For a journalist who once thrived on exposing the drama of others, her own story has become a cautionary tale for an entire profession.
