NEW YORK — Vanity Fair is parting ways with West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi, letting her contract expire at year’s end in the wake of days of explosive allegations about her undisclosed relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary, according to a joint statement first obtained by The Associated Press. The exit, which both parties characterised as “mutually agreed” and “in the best interests of the magazine,” falls in line with a long-simmering ethics incident around Nuzzi’s political reporting Dec. 5, 2025
Olivia Nuzzi’s short time at Vanity Fair ends in controversy.
Olivia Nuzzi was brought in at Vanity Fair this September as its West Coast editor on a temporary contract, and filed not more than one piece for the magazine (an excerpt from her memoir, “American Canto,” rather than a conventional reported feature). Her position became quickly untenable after former fiancé Ryan Lizza published a series of Substack essays accusing her of having had an even deeper romantic and strategic relationship with Kennedy than she had admitted, as well as an additional improper entanglement with Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, yet another one-time profile subject.
Politico reported that the magazine elected not to fire Nuzzi outright, but allowed her contract to expire on Dec. 31, effectively sidelining her while reiterating that she’ll no longer speak for Vanity Fair in public.
The RFK Jr. fallout that caught up to Olivia Nuzzi years later
The final severing of relations at Vanity Fair is the latest twist in a scandal that began in 2024 when New York magazine disclosed that its Washington correspondent, Olivia Nuzzi, had breached conflict-of-interest guidelines by establishing “a personal relationship with a former subject” of interest to the presidential campaign, according to a note to readers from New York magazine published in 2024. Nuzzi confirmed the relationship — which was eventually reported to be with Kennedy — and apologised for not declaring it, despite internal reviews finding that there were no factual errors or overt bias in her reporting.
A few weeks later, Olivia Nuzzi and New York magazine announced their breakup in October 2024, bringing nearly eight years of campaign sex coverage to an end. The episode instantly made media ethics 10 and possibly damaged Kennedy’s already faltering campaign, which, according to a Los Angeles Times column by Robin Abcarian, who cited the intimacy between Kennedy and the reporter as an example of how uneducated readers are about such matters — well enough for this kind of thing to erode coverage and trust.
RFK Jr. fallout, ‘American Canto’ and a reputational spiral
Nuzzi tried to reclaim the narrative this fall with “American Canto,” a memoir that fictionalises Kennedy as “the politician” and dances around their relationship and its aftermath. Reviews were brutal, and early sales were lacklustre; a Forbes breakdown of Nuzzi’s book launch noted that the much-hyped title landed as a “dog” on bestseller lists despite substantial media hoopla.
Substack posts from Lizza only ratcheted up the drama. He claimed that Olivia Nuzzi — whom he said had provided opposition research against him to Kennedy’s team, helped “catch and kill” damaging stories and planned to sleep with Kennedy in the context of a relationship she hoped would be consummated during the 2024 campaign — was playing “the victim,” while other coverage included either accounts of of Kennedy’s erotic poetry or its purported renewed drug use during the time frame of their digital affair.
Kennedy said that she did not have a sexual relationship with Nuzzi, and the journalist has called Lizza’s posts harassment and “fiction-slash-revenge porn,” while her lawyer has said that she admitted to only one improper affair — with Kennedy — in the memoir.
What Vanity Fair’s move says about media ethics
Inside Condé Nast, concern about Olivia Nuzzi had grown for weeks. The New York Times, meanwhile, reported that Vanity Fair was quietly “reviewing its ties” to its new editor as staffers wonder how far the magazine can extend its leash on off-duty entanglements, while an SFGATE explainer (complete with chart!) outlined all the “ludicrous” ins and outs of the RFK–Nuzzi–Lizza triangle.
By waiting to let its agreement with Ms Nuzzi lapse instead of terminating it outright, Vanity Fair seems to be trying to draw a line, one that takes care not to say her published work is fatally compromised but still says undisclosed intimacy with sources cannot coexist with the magazine’s brand of glossy political journalism. For Nuzzi, who has signalled recently that she wants to pivot from campaign reporting, the end of her Vanity Fair run leaves a career once on the upswing in limbo — and turns her saga with RFK Jr. into a warning tale for reporters negotiating the fuzzy lines between access and affection.
