Nuzzing is off limits: Olivia Nuzzi arrives for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton on April 29, 2023. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Welcome to the latest edition of Breaker. If this email has been forwarded, you can subscribe here and send your questions and complaints here. If you have a tip contact the 24/7 Breaker Tip Hotline via text or Signal # 551 655 2343. Anonymity guaranteed!
It’s the yarn that has everyone hooked – Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Lizza. They were once a D.C. power couple and are very much back in the headlines. In tonight’s edition, we have fresh reporting from inside Vanity Fair as the publication navigates uncharted territory with Nuzzi, its recent star hire. We also have exclusive details from The New York Times, where journalists are still hotly debating the merits of a Style section profile on Nuzzi. And to top it all off, we have a saucy scooplet about the crisis comms pro who links The Gray Lady and Nuzzi.
Also, we reveal how an agent well-versed in playing the media, an ambitious client keen for a bigger break, a new TV news boss with no TV experience, and the number one news player in the business with a checkbook ready to go, have converged to create the perfect storm.
On The Breaker Pod this week, we are joined by journalist, podcaster, and Co-founder of Campfire Media, Vanessa Grigoriadis. Vanessa talked us through the rise and fall of the podcast bubble, why TikTok stars make bad interview talent, and how she discovered Breaker’s name in the Epstein files.
Also tonight, Bari Weiss visits the CBS London bureau, we catch up with Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, about Donald Trump’s Khashoggi remarks, and we reveal where Joe Biden was celebrating his birthday Thursday in D.C. following Dick Cheney’s funeral.
Finally, it’s Thursday, which means Journo Jobs is back. Tonight, we have gigs at Forbes, The New York Post, Fox, and a couple of dream jobs at The New Yorker and Vogue Runway.
Mentioned tonight: George Cheeks, Jeff Shell, John Dickerson, Tony Dokoupil, Norah O'Donnell, Tom Cibrowski, Matt Gutman, Anna Wintour, Meredith Kopit Levien, Jacob Bernstein, Carolyn Ryan, Patrick Healy, Ginia Bellafante, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Michael Grynbaum, Carl Swanson, Vanessa Friedman, Alex Vadukul, Katie Rosman, Sara Fischer, Isabel Vincent, Chris Black, Hugo Lowell, Rupert Murdoch, Brooke Hammerling, Mike Hogan, Mary Bruce, Dana Jacobson, Michelle Miller, Lisa Ling, Elise Preston, Nancy Chen, Janet Shamlian, Nikki Battiste, Chris Livesay, Elizabeth Holmes, Jeff Zucker, Ray Dalio, Bobby Kotick, Molly Jong-Fast, Carson Griffith, the voice of Elmo and more.
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A Very Vanity Affair
(Exclusive.) On Thursday afternoon, Vanity Fair staffers gathered at their One World Trade Center HQ for a meeting with Global Editorial Director Mark Guiducci.
Earlier in the week, Guiducci had broken out the bubbly at VF, where Breaker is a contributing editor, to toast the launch of its annual Hollywood Issue.
The issue, Guiducci’s first, started rolling out online Monday with an excerpt from one of Guiducci’s first big splashy hires, West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi’s book American Canto, about the rise of Trump over the last decade.
The book, which is out December 2nd (the same day VF’s Hollywood issue hits newsstands), is the first time Nuzzi has addressed her “digital affair” with RFK Jnr that led to her leaving New York magazine last year.
On Monday evening, Manhattan’s media elite gathered at a cocktail bar in Midtown for a shindig called “Off The Record” hosted by writers turned party planners Molly Jong-Fast and Carson Griffith.
Amongst the crowd were a smattering of New York Times journalists, including Michael Grynbaum, Carl Swanson, Vanessa Friedman, Alex Vadukul, Katie Rosman, Jacob Bernstein, and Carolyn Ryan.
Guests at the shindig certainly had a lot to talk about. As they were mid-cocktail, Ryan Lizza published a bombshell newsletter. “Part 1: How I Found Out” details how he learned his ex-fiancé, Nuzzi, was allegedly having an affair with 2020 presidential candidate Mark Sanford.
Just days earlier, The New York Times had published a piece headlined ‘Olivia Nuzzi Did It All for Love,’ a profile of Nuzzi ahead of the release of the book, which was written by Bernstein and read prior to publication by Ryan.
Besides the glamour photos of Nuzzi that accompanied the piece, what several Times journalists found triggering was a comment that had been posted on Bernstein's behalf on the article.
“Last month, I hopped on a plane from JFK to see Olivia Nuzzi in Malibu,” he wrote.
“We went hiking and ate at diners together. I spent hours sitting shotgun in her Mustang, listening to great music and having fascinating and meaningful conversations with her. She is a writer's dream and a writer's nightmare. Both because she is a very good writer herself and because she is a startling, complex person.”
The profile became a hot topic of discussion Wednesday at a meeting in The Times’s D.C. bureau, where Breaker has learned…
Anchorman
(Exclusive.) ABC News’ Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman has those anchorman-type looks that make you think he was born for TV.
The 47-year-old has made a name for himself with a number of high-profile assignments in the Middle East and Asia, becoming a regular fixture on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, Nightline, and 20/20.
It was at GMA that Gutman became close to CBS News President Tom Cibrowski. Cibrowski was Gutman’s boss at ABC. He helped groom him from fresh-faced GMA correspondent to World News heavy hitter and lead field correspondent.
So with Cibrowski and newly minted CBS News chief booker (sorry, editor-in-chief) Bari Weiss looking for fresh faces as they remake CBS News, Gutman was a correspondent they made a play for.
Gutman is represented by UTA’s Jay Sures, an agent known for negotiating deals in the media, with Status first reporting on November 10 that Weiss had shown interest in Gutman.
In a fun twist, Sures also represents CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil and Senior Correspondent and 60 Minutes contributor Norah O'Donnell. Both names have been floated to anchor a revitalized CBS Evening News.
But Breaker has learned that Gutman has decided to…
Breaker Pod: Vanessa Grigoriadis on the Pod Bubble & Why Breaker Is In The Epstein Files.
(Exclusive.) Our guest this week on The Breaker pod is Vanessa Grigoriadis, a journalist with an enviable portfolio, having written for the likes of New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair.
From Seahorse at Union Square (cheers to owner John McDonald), Grigoriadis, who is the founder of Campsite Media, tells us about the inflation and implosion of the podcasting industry.
“I can make a really interesting interview show for $5,000 an episode. But I gotta be able to make $5,000 back in ads, at least. And that's like, I don't know, a hundred thousand listens. It's very hard to make money,” she told us.
Grigoriadis’s turn to podcasting came after years of profiling celebrities for print, an interview style that doesn’t always resonate in the TikTok age.
“I've interviewed a lot of people who have massive, massive followers on TikTok, and you try to talk to them and it's like they're so media trained, they can't connect with you. They're not authentic. You know, and those are the people who are sort of leading the culture.”
Revealing a scoop of her own on the pod, Grigoriadis told us she’d found Breaker’s name in the Epstein files. “I was like, who are the sketchy people I know?” Tune into the Breaker Pod this week to find out how it got there.
Catch more in this week's episode of The Breaker Pod. Make sure you check us out and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods.