My Blog

I just re-signed with Vanity Fair to continue covering Parkland / #NeverAgain for them for awhile. My gay soldiers book is still a priority, but what these kids are doing is so important. I need to take time away from the book to keep going with this awhile. My latest two stories on Parkland / #NeverAgain are: Vanity Fair: "Fight for Our Lives": How one Parkland survivor experienced the March on Washington. Mar 25, 2018. Vanity Fair: Inside the secret meme lab designed to pro

I'm not sure how I ended up with iTalk to make voice recordings on my phone. Some site must have recommended it, and I recall it being a big improvement at the time. Maybe it was right at the time, but I stayed too long out of habit and knowing how to use it. But so many things about it bugged me. But I've been back in the field reporting on Parkland / #NeverAgain the past month, and really noticing its flaws. (I've been doing a ton of recordings for my gay soldiers book, per

CBS Sunday Morning did a really nice segment on the Parkland #NeverAgain students Sunday, and were nice enough to include me. It was reported by Chip Reid, who did an amazing job interviewing me. It was mainly about the kids, so they just used a bit of me for context, covering it for nineteen years, since the first day of Columbine. You can watch it here (and read the transcript), starting right about 2:40. My part: . . . He says the Parkland teens have energized the dispirit

I'm a few days behind posting this, because I was crazy busy in the field in Parkland reporting my next Vanity Fair piece (which will go up later this week). We did not plan to publish a story on the student walkouts, because they didn't plan a big event at Douglas--and with no press access, except watching from afar over the fence. But then something beautiful happened. So I called my editor, and he said go for it. Here's what happened: My earlier Vanity Fair piece on the Pa

This is exciting news for me. I get emails from readers all the time asking if the book is available in their native language, and sadly, I usually have to say no. The Russian publisher EKSMO will publish Columbine under it's Like Book imprint, and plans to publish it in 18 months. (Translations and everything else takes awhile.) The Brazilian publisher DarkSide will translate to Portuguese and publish there. (I assume they will offer export for Portuguese readers around the

My first big Vanity Fair feature on the Parkland students' amazing #NeverAgain movement just posted: 'The News Forgets.' I kind of do a tick-tock behind the scenes of one part of the movement, and pose this central question: How did these kids punch through, where all their predecessors failed? Spoiler alert on my answer: It’s not about the body count, that’s the first thing they taught us. It’s not even the horror of the catastrophe, as everyone assumed after Newtown. If dea

It was cool to wake up and see Columbine on Esquire's list of The 25 Best True Crime Books Every Person Should Read. Sadly, they had to say it is "more important now than ever." That makes nine all-time true crime best lists that I'm aware of, though I only started keeping track in the last year. (I think it takes awhile for a book to settle onto these lists, though. It's too soon to know when it's a new book and first-time author.) It reads: In an age when school shootings

Look who just showed up! I love my amaryllis. First flowers just opened yesterday. And she sent up two stalks at the same time — that's a first. (She usually sends up a second as the first is wrapping up. Will I get a third? That's never happened. But I really maximized the sun this year, and she never lost a leaf.) I know Christmas is traditional for these things, but not my tradition. I really enjoy her as an early taste of spring— my first bloom. Plus, I'm a single guy who

Things got crazy when Vanity Fair assigned me to do a series of pieces for them and was on a plane to Parkland, Florida to meet the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School kids the next morning. I never got a chance to post this piece I wrote in the first two days after the Valentine's Day tragedy for Politico Magazine, but I hope you find it worth a look: Will the Parkland kids change the gun debate? My first piece for Vanity Fair should be up soon. I have this page with links

I've been too busy covering the amazing Douglas kids responding to their school shooting to post here, but I did CNN's Reliable Sources podcast with Brian Stelter about how the media should respond to these shootings. You can listen here. It's just the two of us, for about 40 minutes. He's great. I also updated my Interviews page with links to these recent Parkland appearances.