David Carr, a man who escaped the clutches of drug addiction to become the celebrated media columnist of the New York Times, has died after collapsing in his office at the age of 58.
The Times broke the news online after the paper’s executive editor Dean Baquet sent an internal email notifying staff.
I am sorry to have to tell you that our wonderful, esteemed colleague David Carr died suddenly tonight after collapsing in the newsroom.
A group of us were with his wife, Jill, and one of his daughters, at the hospital.
He was the finest media reporter of his generation, a remarkable and funny man who was one of the leaders of our newsroom.
Carr had written on the media for a quarter of a century, arriving at the Times in 2002 as a business reporter covering the magazine industry.
Related: David Carr: tributes paid to 'unique' New York Times media columnist
He had previously reported for the Atlantic Monthly and New York, Inside.com and edited the Washington City Paper and Twin Cities Reader.
He was the star of Page One, a documentary about the New York Times, and initiated many of the newspaper’s reporting institutions, including The Carpetbagger, new from the red carpet during the awards season, and The Media Equation, a column that analysed developments in news, publishing, and social media.
Carr was an early adopter and unapologetic proselytiser for the capabilities and power of social media. He had nearly half a million Twitter followers.
But he walked an unconventional path to journalism.
Carr’s 2008 book The Night of the Gun was a raw and brutal memoir detailing his experiences as a cocaine addict and dealer in the 1980s, his slow, painful recovery, and his later-life reconciliation with his earlier self.
The book included interviews with people from his past and was written as though he was reporting on his own life.
Carr was famously passionate about his craft and wrote famously that journalism jobs should be hard to get.
If you’re gonna get a job that’s a little bit of a caper, that isn’t really a job, that under ideal circumstances you get to at least leave the building and leave your desktop, go out, find people more interesting than you, learn about something, come back and tell other people about it – that should be hard to get into. That should be hard to do. No wonder everybody’s lined up, trying to get into it. It beats working.
Carr was known as a mentor to young journalists both inside the New York Times newsroom and out.
“Keep typing until it turns into writing,” and “being a good writer doesn’t make you a good reporter, it takes hustle” were among his epigrams of encouragement.
He saw a bright future for journalism, despite diminishing revenues for news organisations and cutbacks to staffing rosters.
“Right now, being a reporter is a golden age. There may be a lack of business models to back it up, but having AKTOCA on – All Known Thought One Click Away – on my desktop, tablet or phone makes it immensely deeper, richer exercise than it used to be,” he wrote recently.
Carr collapsed in the Times newsroom in Manhattan about 9pm on Thursday evening. He was taken to Roosevelt hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Earlier in the evening he had moderated a panel discussion on Oscar-nominated film Citizenfour alongside filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald. Appearing via videolink was NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The New York Times, alongside the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the Washington Post, were the key media organisations reporting the details of Snowden’s national security revelations.
Carr lived in Montclair, New Jersey. He is survived by his wife, Jill, their daughter Maddie and his twin daughters, Erin and Meagan.
Tributes flowed on Thursday from colleagues and fellow journalists:
— Joe Nocera (@NoceraNYT) February 13, 2015David Carr was the most generous journalist I've ever known--nobody more willing to help his brethren. That was only one of his gifts
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) February 13, 2015David Carr stood out because at a time when the news industry is struggling for its soul, he exemplified both soul and integrity. RIP
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 13, 2015There's so much to say about the career of David Carr. Here's a start: http://t.co/48rJyiEHOs pic.twitter.com/VWo3LWoEFC