And I was just kind of making small talk with him before our interview.
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And it wasn't until close to the end of my reporting trip that I was interviewing the editor who has since passed away of the free gay weekly paper Watermark. And I knew that I had been barhopping in Orlando, so I felt a connection to this city and this community. They showed me around their town, Orlando.Īnd so, you know, you fast-forward 12 years, and I'm flying down to Orlando to cover the Pulse nightclub shooting. And the next night was their night off, so they invited me to go out with them. And I made friends with a couple of bartenders named Nathan (ph) and Bobby (ph). I was on a reporting trip to Orlando and had a quiet Monday night and decided to just go to the nearest gay bar, which was pretty empty. And when I headed down there, I knew that I had been barhopping in Orlando in 2004, back when I was based in Florida, covering the state for about nine months for NPR. SHAPIRO: So the shooting took place in 2016. How'd you figure that out, and how did it strike you when you did? MARTIN: Well, I do hope people read the piece, but I hope you don't mind if I start with a bit of a spoiler, which is that it wasn't until you got on the scene and started talking to people that you realized you had actually been there.
Ari, thanks so much for being here and spending some time with us on this day of remembrance.ĪRI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: Thanks for having me. He wrote about this for The Atlantic, and he's here with us now to tell us more about it. And it would have been a difficult and draining story for any journalist to cover, but even more so when Ari realized it hit closer to home than he had first understood. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in the country. Five years ago, he got on a plane to report on the Pulse nightclub shooting. We hope you know him as one of the voices of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED during the week.