NEW YORK, NY Feb. 13 (DPI) – Reader tributes this morning to NYT Columnist David Carr are numerous and gushing, which would likely have amused the talented, mildly sardonic and wizened media writer who’d established a wide following in recent years.
He died suddenly last night, age 58, after collapsing in the NYT’s newroom. His colleagues produced, in the minutes after watching him die, a front-page obituary of him.
Carr, who chronicled his own addiction problems in a 2008 book, wrote for alternative weeklies in Minneapolis early in his career and worked in Washington before joining The Times in 2002. In recent years he wrote about goings-on in media, not only focusing on other big media outlets but on The Times itself: He wrote extensively on the ouster last summer of the NYT’s executive editor and even on the paper’s business prospects:
http://www.dpi.com/2014/12/nyts-carr-says-big-media-is-in-trouble-including-nyt/
Readers on comment boards expressed a great sense of loss today:
My NYTs is lighter today, a little less interesting…I feel sorry for us NYTs readers, because there are no more Carr words to come. Godspeed.
One of highest recommended this morning:
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this strongly about the death of a public person. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. David Carr’s fierce love of the Times, his hard-earned moral authority and his beautiful writing made the world a better, more thoughtful place. Someone once said, ‘Don’t be the best, be the only.” David Carr was an only. Absolutely terrible loss. My heart goes out to those who knew him close up and loved him.