THE CM INTERVIEW
NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER OLIVIA NUZZI AT A GLANCE Monmouth County native Olivia Nuzzi, a national political reporter, has weathered many a political storm and come through with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
STORY S U S A N M U R P H Y
In fact, at 23, Nuzzi has already handled “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of politics with an impressive determination to write what she sees.
“I
22
think to pursue any career where your work is for public consumption you have to be somewhat masochistic, because you will inevitably have critics. I assume psychologically healthy people would not be interested in laboring over something only to have it torn apart by people on Twitter, but political journalists seem to thrive on that sort of conflict,” said Nuzzi.
More Monmouth Musings, a news website. “I always liked to write and when I became obsessed with politics, after Governor McGreevey resigned, it seemed natural to write about politics. I thought perhaps I would become a speechwriter or work in political communications, but I think I was too skeptical for either of those professions. I could never be earnest enough to work for a candidate or political cause.”
Nuzzi grew up in Red Bank, NJ and attended River Plaza Elementary School, Thompson Middle School, and Middletown South High School. “I left Middletown South to study independently and graduated in 2012. While in high school, I mostly kept to myself. I read a lot and watched the news.” During high school, Nuzzi wrote for The TriCity News and for
While attending Fordham University, Nuzzi had been freelancing for New York Magazine and Politico Magazine, as well as what she termed “a vaguely satirical print publication called NSFWCorp.” She majored in political science but left after a few semesters to join The Daily Beast full time. “I didn’t much like attending college and I guess time will tell if
COMMUNITY MAGAZINE WWW.COMMUNITYMAGAZINENJ.COM
leaving to work as a journalist was a smart decision,” she noted. Nuzzi started freelancing for The Daily Beast in the winter of 2014, and joined them full time in March 2014. The Daily Beast is an American news reporting and opinion website focusing on politics and pop culture that started up in 2008. “I love magazine journalism, but I also have a high metabolism for news, so The Daily Beast is the ideal place to be able to write freely in my style on a daily basis about breaking political stories. I think it’s the ideal place to be for 2016, because we value honesty over faux objectivity, which makes us well-suited to cover Donald Trump, who is the biggest political story certainly of my lifetime. A lot of organizations seem to be struggling to cover him because they are trying to