A Times Reporter Returns Home to Cover a Tragedy

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MIAMI — Inside the computer lab at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month, students worked furiously on their yearbook, their overlapping conversations moving so briskly that sometimes it was difficult to keep up.

But listening closely, I found some of their chatter to be jarring.

One moment, two students were engaged in a lighthearted thumb war. The next, two other students mentioned — casually, almost in passing — how many death threats they had received on Twitter.

“The ‘block’ button is great,” said Aly Sheehy, an 18-year-old senior.

Aly and her classmates were dealing with their new, inescapable reality as survivors of one the deadliest school shootings in modern American history. And I, a reporter returning home to cover its aftermath, was learning that the first few months of my new job would be consumed with stories of lost innocence.

I became Miami bureau chief for The New York Times in December, after a decade at The Miami Herald. To get acquainted with my new colleagues and newsroom rhythms, the National editor, Marc Lacey, asked me to spend some time in New York. (Note to self: In the future, refuse to leave Florida in winter.)

I was still in New York on Valentine’s Day when someone flagged me about reports of an active shooter at Stoneman Douglas. They must be mistaken, I thought. Years ago, I covered the Broward County school district for The Herald. Stoneman Douglas was — and still is — a jewel in the Broward public school system, the sixth largest in the country.

I wanted to fly to South Florida as soon as possible. But I was helping to report in New York, and it took me 10 days to get back. Once here, with no assignment or story in mind, I drove to Parkland. I needed to see the school for myself. Standing alone next to the vast, improvised memorial outside its gates, I felt overcome with sadness. I rushed to my car and cried.

In late February, the photographer Sam Hodgson pitched spending some time with Sarah Lerner, the yearbook adviser, and her staff. I thought the idea was brilliant, and I was grateful that Ms. Lerner, her students and school administrators would let us in to report. I worried about how the students would react to us. But I had forgotten, in my years since covering education, how easily young people get used to having a reporter around. How often they speak truths that older people might hesitate to say out loud. How incisive their reflections and observations can be.

Sam and I tried to be unobtrusive, letting the students work while we hung back and watched and listened. But the computer lab was small, and we were unavoidable.

Still, the students said they appreciated that we tried to blend in. They did not mince words when they shared their grievances about other journalists since the shooting. Throngs of reporters crowded the sidewalk on the day the school reopened, clamoring for a sound bite. Kyra Parrow, an 18-year-old senior, chided that reporters “always ask the same questions.”

At one point, I started talking with Isabel Chequer, a 16-year-old junior who was painstakingly reviewing group photos for student clubs and identifying each person pictured. To my surprise, she called the task “kind of relaxing.”

“It’s just such a good distraction for everything going on,” she said.

Isabel explained a few minutes later that she had been injured in the shooting. I didn’t know this; the names of the wounded had not yet been made public, and she had not shared her story with any reporter.

But there, side by side in the yearbook lab, she recounted her horrifying experience, with the remarkable poise that has characterized so many of the Parkland students.

“It’s kind of been overwhelming. I’m kind of closed off in talking about my emotions,” Isabel said. “I’ll never be over the grief.”

But she expressed hope about the future: that a story of loss might turn into one of recovery and action.

“I really think we’re going to do something,” she said. “We’re going to change the world forever.”