Greetings from Los Angeles and welcome to the weekend—and, for those of you already on a jet headed to Aspen, The Weekend (if you know, you know). By now, you’re no doubt all too familiar with the R.F.K. Jr.–Olivia Nuzzi sexting scandal that blew up a thousand text chains late last night, at least in Washington and Brooklyn. Of course, the story behind the story is even messier than you can imagine. In tonight’s email, new details on how New York magazine’s star political reporter found herself in this unfortunate situation, and where things go from here. Plus, a CNN scoop: the Mark Thompson–Josh Tyrangiel marriage is not to be.

Also mentioned in tonight’s email: Ryan Lizza, Rupert Murdoch, Matt Gaetz, David Haskell, Mathias Döpfner, John Malone, Daniel Sanchez, Andy Lack, Oliver Darcy, Scott Pelley, Elise Jordan, Jan Bayer, and more…

But first…

• More tea from Murdoch trial?: My partner Eriq Gardner flags a new effort by media organizations to gain greater access to the Reno courtroom where Rupert Murdoch is fighting to amend his irrevocable trust and guarantee Lachlan control of the Fox-News Corp. empire. “Who has control of Rupert Murdoch’s many companies, his legacy, and his $20 billion fortune is a matter of immense public interest,” the companies argued in an emergency petition to Nevada’s Supreme Court, adding that “the succession will affect thousands of jobs, millions of worldwide media consumers, and the American political landscape.”

  Just before hitting send on this email, the judges did indeed order the Murdochs to more fully respond to media companies’ efforts to unseal the proceedings. “Although the media won’t be allowed into the trial right now, there’s burgeoning hope that more of the arguments and evidence might come to light,” Eriq notes. “Plus, there’s always the possibility of releasing transcripts.”

• Mathias’s Springer board: As anticipated, Mathias Döpfner officially consummated his split from KKR this week and will take full control of the Axel Springer media assets, freeing him to pursue further investment and expansion via M&A. As I noted in my last email, the Financial Times is seen as a possible target. (Indeed, the Springer-KKR split seems to have kicked off a lot of banker interest in the FT in recent days.) Jan Bayer, who oversees Axel’s U.S. portfolio, will now serve as chairman of a new supervisory board; Niddal Salah-Eldin, the talent and culture chief, will exit the company. (Full details on the new corporate structure and org chart here.)

• All in the family: Warner Bros. Discovery director John Malone added his nephew Daniel Sanchez to the board. An attorney specializing in tax law and tax planning, Sanchez previously served on the Discovery board before its merger with WarnerMedia in 2022. Still, if you needed any reminder of just how much power Malone wields over that board—and why Zaz is totally secure in his job—well, there you go…

• Lack’s back: Former NBC News Group chief Andy Lack is executive producing a new Fred Friendly-style show for PBS called Deadlock, in which government officials, political insiders, and media types try to work their way through hypothetical—but not implausible—crisis scenarios on the night of a contested presidential election. Familiar green room denizens featured on the show include CBS’s Scott Pelley, NBC’s Elise Jordan, and The New York Times’ Astead Herndon. In an interview, Lack said he’s hoping to bring more shows like this to PBS.
• Have two minutes?: A reminder to fill out this survey for the Puck Private Conversation, powered by Orchestra, an exciting new product we’re spinning up. We want your unvarnished opinion about everything—from what you think has been Zaz’s biggest blunder to whether your Gen Z colleagues work as hard as you did at their age. (Be honest…) It’s yet another step toward Puck’s goal of bringing you into the conversations that matter in your world.

And now, on to the story everyone is talking about…

In a statement, New York parentco Vox Media acknowledged that it was conducting a third-party review to ensure that none of Nuzzi’s work included inaccuracies or evidence of bias. Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy was “a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures,” New York noted in a statement. “Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign. … We regret this violation of our readers’ trust.”

In a subsequent statement that contained quite a morsel of a twist, Nuzzi clarified that the relationship was “never physical”—an insinuation that it was some sort of prurient emotional and sexting dynamic. For its part, R.F.K.’s camp claimed that the two had met only once, for the interview that “yielded a hit piece” in the magazine. (At the time, R.F.K. tweeted out the article and called it “provocative.”)

Within an hour, this sort-of tangential news story had achieved supernova status, flooding the inboxes of both the Gang of 500 crowd and also the myopic media world on both coasts. In D.C., where there are too many reporters and not enough stories, the news that a creepy former presidential candidate had digitally fucked around on his celebrity wife was basically discarded—all they cared about was Olivia.

Reporters being reporters, they also cared about collateral damage and a cascading set of questions to be addressed. Had Nuzzi’s relationship informed her subsequent reporting? When did her fiancé, Politico Playbook reporter Ryan Lizza, find out about this digital affair and did it impact his own work? Why had Politico not addressed it in Friday morning’s Playbook? (Politico issued a statement in the afternoon.) And what about R.F.K.’s own wife, the actress Cheryl Hines?

Of course, the most cynical, cold-hearted Washingtonians already assumed that neither Nuzzi nor Lizza would ever live this down in small-town D.C., where everyone can recite their colleagues’ (and nemeses’) curricula vitae. Nuzzi, many assumed, would be cold-shouldered from journalism and perhaps forced to leave town to pursue aspirations developing projects in Hollywood, or working for Bari Weiss. Lizza, perhaps, would continue his long drift from his former New Republic wunderkind status. And on some level, many privately expressed surprise but not shock. After all, Lizza and Nuzzi delighted in their pseudo-celebrity status in town, starfuckers and name-droppers in a uniquely Beltway manner, or, honestly, just like everyone else.

As it turns out, Nuzzi sent Kennedy nude photos of herself—“demure,” per a source familiar—and the relationship likely was indeed strictly remotus (of course, only two people know for sure). Meanwhile, the relationship probably started just a bit earlier than the existing timeline suggests, and the claim by R.F.K.’s spokesperson that they only met once is not entirely accurate. (It was more than once, but whatever.)

Amid his Italian sojourn, Haskell had been fending off a separate P.R. controversy regarding an article about cat owners and new mothers. (Life is short. Google it if you must.) But the fallout from Nuzzigate—at least nine articles in the Daily Mail and counting—was sufficient enough to warrant a Katie Robertson story on the Times homepage. For whatever it’s worth, this is all a very 2024 scandal.

Nuzzi and Lizza had been engaged for two years, up until a month or so ago, when they broke up. In the immediate aftermath, some of Nuzzi’s associates advanced the idea that Lizza had leaked news of his ex-fiancée’s SMS dalliance to Haskell and New York, perhaps through anonymous channels, in order to exact some measure of retribution. Again, there are certain things only certain people know for sure, but my reporting thus far leads me to believe that this hypothesis is not true. (Interpret this how you will, but Darcy’s original report notes that the 70-year-old R.F.K. was “alleged to have boasted privately about the alleged relationship” with the 31-year-old journalist.)

Outside the rampant speculation about disgruntled lovers and ulterior motives, the most pertinent question is whether Nuzzi will keep her job. After a chaotic first 24 hours in which Nuzzi appeared to have been getting conflicting advice from multiple friends, frenemies, and representatives, she is now quietly awaiting the results of her employer’s investigation. The salient question for Haskell and Vox Media chief executive Jim Bankoff, of course, is whether her relationship with R.F.K. influenced any of her coverage—including, most notably, her memorable July feature about “the conspiracy of silence” to protect Joe Biden from scrutiny over his mental decline. (At the time of publication, Kennedy was still running on a third-party ticket.)

In an interview with The New York Times in March, Nuzzi asserted that the 2024 campaign was “a three-man race,” and she knocked “the establishment press” for refusing to take Kennedy’s candidacy seriously. Anyway, it’s a lot for Haskell to think about on the flight home from Milan.

Very much like the Will Lewis saga at The Washington Post over the summer, the Nuzzi scandal broke amid a particularly vacant news cycle. Had Darcy published his report a day earlier, the R.F.K. situation might have been overwhelmed by the Mark Robinson scandal. The good news for Nuzzi, however, is that eventually something will come along that will knock the story of her, a wacko flyby presidential candidate, and a digitally cuckolded reporter out of the news. Oh look, there’s Matt Gaetz.

As I wrote several weeks ago, a major piece of that transformation centered on Thompson’s effort to hire Josh Tyrangiel, the brilliant former magazine editor who rose up through the ranks of Time before leading the very expensive and temporary revival of Bloomberg Businessweek. Tyrangiel eventually went on to oversee all of Bloomberg LP’s non-terminal creative output, and then jumped to Vice News as the head of its little-watched but oft-applauded nightly HBO news program. Thompson’s hope was that Tyrangiel could help disrupt the tired customs and overhaul the staid aesthetics of the 44-year-old network—in other words, break the norms that, frankly, really need to be broken, albeit with some sensitivity to the existing infrastructure and super-egos.

Depending on where you sat at CNN and which Tyrangiel associates you knew, the news of his courtship inspired either hope or terror. Tyrangiel is widely viewed as a smart and creative leader, dismissive of legacy media’s archaic formulas and unafraid to say as much. And, as one CNN journalist put it, perhaps “the place could do with an injection of start-up mentality and instability.”

At the same time, many people think he’s overrated and suspect he managed his way up without really accomplishing all that much. After all, his Bloomberg projects were costly and his Vice show never really gained traction. Meanwhile, he’s never gone anywhere without acquiring a reputation as a crafty operator. As I noted the other week, at Time he earned the nickname Iago because of his penchant for whispering nasty shit about his peers into his boss’s ear. In any event, Thompson was smitten, like Jim Kelly and Norm Pearlstine and Richard Plepler before him.

Alas, it is not to be. On Friday, I learned that Tyrangiel passed on the opportunity after determining that it wasn’t the right fit. (He’s got other projects afloat and could afford the right to be choosy.) One sticking point, I’m told, is that Tyrangiel wanted to report directly to Thompson, while the latter didn’t want to split the newsroom and create a digital vs. television dynamic. Alternatively, Tyrangiel may have also determined that the Sisyphean task of modernizing CNN may have been too much of a headache. Either way, it’s yet another setback—and a slightly visible one—for a company all too familiar with them by now.

When setbacks happen, and mediacos are having a hard time putting points on the board, executives like the one I spoke to this week like to argue that “it’s still early,” or “we’re still in the first inning.” One year into Thompson’s tenure, and two and a half years since WBD’s takeover, CNN staff still just want to know, as one reporter put it, “what the fuck is going on.” This person continued: “There are a lot of big promises being made, a lot of big promises that have been made, and then there is stuff like Tyrangiel that are open secrets… That makes for a very uncertain future.” Even more uncertain now that he’s passed on the offer.