R.I.P. NY Times Media Critic, Writer David Carr

David Carr 2008 (NY Times)

David Carr, a writer who wriggled away from the demon of drug addiction to become an unlikely name-brand media columnist at The New York Times, and the star of a documentary about the newspaper, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 58.

Mr. Carr collapsed in The Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Earlier in the evening, he moderated a panel discussion about the film “Citizenfour” with its principal subject, Edward J. Snowden; the film’s director, Laura Poitras; and Glenn Greenwald, a journalist.

More recently he was best known for The Media Equation, a Monday column in The Times that analyzed news and developments in publishing, television, social media — for which he was an early evangelist — and other mass communications platforms. His plain-spoken style was sometimes blunt, and searingly honest about himself. The effect was both folksy and sophisticated, a voice from a shrewd and well-informed skeptic.

In a statement, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., The Times’s publisher and chairman said: “David Carr was one of the most gifted journalists who has ever worked at The New York Times.

Carr On Radio

In 2010, Carr wrote this "takedown" piece on Randy Michaels and the woes of The Tribune Company:  Click Here