My 1st Vanity Fair piece on #NeverAgain: 'The News Forgets'

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 dead 6-year-olds can’t do it . . . That was the mantra, its logic unquestioned, until these audacious student disregarded the defeatism that was smothering gun safety fought back.

It’s about the messenger. It’s about the right people with the right standing, in the right moment, just picking up the ball and running with it.

I'm covering Never Again for Vanity Fair now, so more coming over the next several weeks. I'm back in NYC recuperating briefly—(and writing and rewriting and rewriting and fact-checking; it took awhile)—and planning out the next piece. I'll be back in Parkland soon.

Here are links to all my stories on mass murder (ugh) and Columbine (and everything else).

And I've posted links to some of my recent TV appearances on Parkland/#NeverAgain (Anderson Cooper, Nicole Wallace, etc.)