Media journalist Oliver Darcy said breaking the Olivia Nuzzi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. affair story was a “terrifying” experience as a newly independent journalist who had just struck out on his own after leaving CNN, speaking at TheWrap’s Grill conference on Tuesday.
“When you are at a mainstream media organization, you do have a network; a safety net of people who are checking everything. So when it’s by yourself, it is a little different to push that publish button and you let it fly out into the world,” the Status founder told moderator and TheWrap CEO/editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman. “With a newsletter, especially, it’s a little different even than publishing online in that you cannot edit it. There’s no correction that you can really do afterward, right? It is in people’s inboxes. Once you hit send, it is gone and you can edit the web version, but it’s gone out to as many as thousands of people. So that was also a little terrifying.”
“I don’t have an in-house attorney at the moment, so I had to consult an attorney,” Darcy added of the story’s legal aspects. “I reached out and ended up talking to a couple people who did work with me, basically pro bono. So that was one thing, because if you’re dealing with a sensitive story like this, you want to make sure you’re legally buttoned up.”
Darcy’s comments came while discussing bringing traditional principles into new age journalism as part of the panel, “Uncensored: Top Journalists Debate Media, Tech & Entertainment.” His fellow panelists included Adam Lashinsky, former executive editor at Fortune; and Laura Holson, award-winning journalist and founder of The Box Sessions.
“It’s starting to matter less and less where the news breaks, as long as people trust you; if they trust that you have a good track record of reporting accurate information,” Darcy said. “If I publish it on my brand new website and newsletter, or if it’s published on CNN, I don’t really know if there would be any difference if I had published that story at CNN. I think it would have the same exact impact as it did when I published it on my own, and I think that’s really representative of the changing environment.”
Still, there are many rules of journalism the former CNN correspondent must abide by on his own.
“I followed those mainstream media protocols, so I wanted to make sure it’s fair to her and I reach out for comment, to her agent for comments and New York Magazine,” he explained. “So I did all of my own, and that was the normal process of reporting a story and so that part was pretty standard for me.”
“Any story like that, it’s obviously very sensitive and you want to make sure it’s right,” Darcy concluded. “But everything went smoothly and I think that it was almost comforting in a way. After about 30 to 45 minutes, CNN, my former employer, quickly confirmed all the key details.”
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