On a Sunday night in mid-October, newly minted VF editorial director Mark Guiducci took Olivia Nuzzi to dinner in Los Angeles. Weeks earlier, Mark had announced that Olivia was joining the magazine as its West Coast editor—a mildly splashy, mildly controversial hire given the prurient R.F.K. Jr. melodrama (perhaps you’re familiar…) that had driven her out of New York magazine, and Washington, and into a self-imposed exile in Malibu. Having failed to lure any other marquee hire to the once-august Condé title, Mark had at least found a name in Olivia—and, perhaps, a potential character journalist befitting the old Vanity Fair tradition of Dominick Dunne. Perhaps Olivia might penetrate the inner sanctums of Hollywood and Silicon Valley with the same acuity and élan she’d exhibited in D.C., albeit with the help of some serious editing.