I occupy an odd slot in journalism, a Brit in London on an entirely American team, almost all of whom are in the States. It is somewhat justifiable that I know plenty about the NYC and DC journalism scenes. These are the people I work with daily, on their timezone and within their culture. Because of this I’ve heard plenty about the Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr and Ryan Lizza drama in the last week. But increasingly I think I’ve heard too much about the situation.
If you’re a sane person and not primed on this story: Nuzzi, the Washington Correspondent for New York Magazine, is on leave after her boss discovered that she’d engaged in a digital relationship with RFK Jr who was, until recently, a third party candidate in the 2024 race. The relationship appears to have begun after Nuzzi profiled him for the magazine. Nuzzi’s former partner, Ryan Lizza (POLITICO’s Chief Washington Correspondent) has said that he and Nuzzi have ended their engagement. The story was reported out by Oliver Darcy, for Status News.
For clarity: This isn’t a post about the ethics of the situation (which are clear cut) or whether 31 means you’re old enough to know better (lol). This is a post about how journalism both in the US and UK has shrunk to the point where I already knew who the main characters of this scandal were, long before it broke. I already knew the main beats of their careers, who was officially involved with whom and what they looked like. In the last few days I’ve consumed pieces about it with energy and enthusiasm and now I feel ashamed.
Again, I live in London. I have never met any of these people. They are not celebrities. This level of knowledge, some of it parasocial, isn't normal - and yet when I chat to journos here, even ones less professionally plugged into the US than I am, they all have similar background knowledge.
“She has,” one friend said to me “the most gorgeous hair.”
The concept of the media star isn’t new. But in the past they didn’t feel compelled to post publicly about the books they were reading or the weddings they attended over the weekend. Increasingly we treat these celebrity-adjacent individuals as celebrities in their own right, as opposed to professionals who are subject to strict newsroom standards.
Nuzzi had solid sources and striking access to Trumpworld. She’d jumpstarted her career early, parlaying a brief stint interning with Anthony Weiner when she was 20 into writing a piece about him which unintentionally landed her on the front page of the New York Daily News. Her career took off shortly afterwards.
I read and frequently enjoyed her stories though sometimes the tone of her prose left me squeamish. She seemed to be inventing, in real time, a voice for millennial and online Washington. Her writing was compelling but at times irreverent. Analysis and memes sat near each other on the page. She had a strong eye for a telling detail. I liked that she didn’t take the DC beat too seriously, though in hindsight that feels like a mistake on my part as a reader. I followed her on Twitter because that’s what journalists did back in 2016. You’re told to post, but not just about work. You should be human and funny. You must “grow your platform.” For journalists today, visibility is currency. You can’t afford to be remote and distant, like the news executives who run everything.
Nuzzi is combative on Twitter, sometimes wildly so and fairly transparent about her political leanings. She posted constantly. She does have great hair. I could see that she was well-networked; seemingly friendly with big power players in DC journalism and of course, engaged to Lizza. I had read him too, at The New Yorker before he was fired in 2017 over improper sexual conduct, which he denied.
I assume many of the big names defending Nuzzi know and like her in a personal capacity. I cannot see a professional rationale for the defences. I’ve heard complaints that the DC bubble is too obsessed with the story. “I really do not get it,” one editor groused on Slack. “There’s a war on. Two!”
But to me the reason for this multi-day obsession is pretty obvious. The media industry in the West is shrinking. The kind of job Nuzzi has - a staff writer role at a buzzy magazine, which brings opportunities to travel and interview presidents - is a dream job. It is a well paid job. It is a near impossible job to get. In a cratering industry the handful of people who rise into these jobs become stars. They have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Everyone reads their pieces. To the people in the ranks below them, they occupy a kind of influencer space - no brand deals but job security and access to the Oval Office. It’s been a long time since this game was about holding power to account.
In US journalism today it’s a fact that leaning into natural charisma and conventional, white, attractiveness will give your career a boost. This bred intense resentment, some of it misogynistic, around Nuzzi years before this scandal. I’ve seen plenty of people say she was lucky and mediocre. Some go right ahead and say her looks and youth played a part in her success. Some thought she was obnoxious or too right wing and disliked her profiles of unsavoury characters.
This dynamic - a few well paid stars and a whole industry of others who are underpaid or at risk of being cut - is wildly unhealthy. It leads to the kind of schadenfreude that we’ve seen this week. I’m not defending Nuzzi’s actions. I’m saying I shouldn’t care about her, 4 days into the story. I shouldn’t have known anything about her, beyond her byline, in the days before.
Journalism remains a trade. It is a normal job under a veneer of glamour. Unless you’re one of a few people on TV, there are no guardrails with the niche celebrity that comes with a star reporter gig. People know who you are and where you grew up, what you look like and that you’re single now but there are no bodyguards and not nearly enough money to protect yourself from scrutiny. If the industry turns into one based on fame, we’re in more trouble than I realised.