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- New York magazine is parting ways with Olivia Nuzzi after a third-party investigation.
- Nuzzi’s relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led to a conflict of interest probe.
- The magazine said the investigation found no inaccuracies in her work.
New York magazine is parting ways with its star Washington correspondent Oliva Nuzzi after a third-party investigation into her work, the publication announced Monday.
Vox Media-owned New York magazine put Nuzzi on leave in September and hired a big-name law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, to review her work after her relationship with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became public.
New York magazine characterized the parting as mutual and said the investigation found “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in her reporting. A spokesperson declined to comment beyond the statement.
The magazine had put Nuzzi on leave after her editors learned she’d had a relationship with Kennedy while reporting on the presidential race. New York called it a “violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures” and said it would hire a third party to investigate. Nuzzi previously said in a statement to The New York Times that the relationship wasn’t physical. A Kennedy rep has said he only met Olivia Nuzzi once for an interview she requested.
The scandal has spilled into Nuzzi’s personal life and beyond. Nuzzi accused her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza of blackmail and career threats in court documents. The court granted Nuzzi a temporary restraining order and the pair are due back in court next month. Lizza, meanwhile, took a leave of absence from his job as political reporter at Politico (which shares a parent company with Business Insider).
Lizza denied the accusations, saying in a statement: “These allegations are disgraceful lies that Ms. Nuzzi has used to harass me for weeks in a coordinated defamation campaign. Her own catastrophic recklessness is solely responsible for the humiliation and ridicule she claims she has suffered. She is abusing protections meant for survivors of domestic violence to ruin my reputation in a last-ditch effort to salvage her own.”
Here’s New York magazine’s full statement:
Last month, the magazine enlisted the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine to review Olivia Nuzzi’s work during the 2024 campaign. They reached the same conclusion as the magazine’s initial internal review of her published work, finding no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. 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.