Here’s my question about the latest Olivia Nuzzi/Ryan Lizza developments, which include: a third, actually shocking dispatch from Lizza, released the day before Thanksgiving the way a happy, well-adjusted person would definitely go about it; a fourth kind of sad one; a fifth where he purports to publish “primary source material” via a copy-and-paste-just-trust-me job that is doing a LOT of work; the actual publication of Nuzzi’s memoir (and subsequent savaging from Becca Rothfeld, Scaachi Koul, and Molly Fischer, to begin with); Nuzzi finally surfacing in a Feed Me AMA to answer, disappointingly, crowd-sourced softballs; Nuzzi then also going on The Bulwark podcast and not really seeming remotely ready for the obvious questions; Nuzzi apparently going on How Long Gone later this week:

Substack wants you to think this is all a cool interesting media story in how it’s mostly playing out on, well, Substack. I suppose it is (lest we forget, Oliver Darcy broke the story of Nuzzi’s firing originally on his, yes, non-Substack newsletter). But perhaps I find it just frankly puzzling (even though I guess it’s very obvious why) that two journalists who so famously minted their coin at exhaustively edited, interview-heavy, fact-check-obsessed, respected-as-bona-fide-truth-tellers outlets like New York mag and The New Yorker would want to litigate/launder whatever is going on/whatever went on through such different channels — which, all due respect to (most of) them, are not where one would expect such children of hard news capital-I institutions to put their faith. If Nuzzi and Lizza are both so convinced they’re in the right, why NOT let a longtime trusted third party dedicate the rest of its 2025 editorial budget (well…) to adjudicate and get to the bottom of this once and for all, for all of our sake? For a pair of capital-J journalists, they seem to not have much faith at all in the traditional Journalistic practice. though let’s be real, I don’t know which institution I think could touch the story properly and “objectively.” VF is out, duh. That fluffy inaugural NYT coverage of Nuzzi’s book was such a joke. Maybe The Atlantic lol?

I’m being a snob; perhaps this IS just a sign of the media times! I just wonder: If you’ve made your career on journalistic rigor (supposedly), why aren’t you also entrusting your greatest personal and professional shitstorm to the machine that made you, instead of like, publishing “verified” “memos” onto your paywalled newsletter? I thought you guys at least believed in SOME of this.