At the risk of this blog becoming a collection of obituaries, it is important to recognize the passing of a man who The New York Times executive editor called, “the finest media reporter of his generation.” Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the Time’s publisher and chairman, said, “David Carr was one of the most gifted journalists who has ever worked at The New York Times.”
David Carr, media reporter for The New York Times newspaper, was an enigma. No one who knew him in his earlier life as a crack addict and single parent on welfare could have seen his rise to celebrity reporter for, arguably, the greatest journalistic enterprise of the modern age.
In his regular Monday column, The Media Equation, Carr dissected the media industry and many of its key players. His writing was often acerbic but always insightful. If all that you knew about the media industries was what you read in David Carr’s columns, you’d be pretty well-informed. If he hadn’t died last week I’m sure that he would have had something pithy to say about the 3.5 hour-long 40th anniversary of SNL that aired this past weekend. And you can be sure that he’d have written something both relevant and revealing about the upcoming Academy Awards telecast this Sunday. Carr did live long enough to weigh in on the very public implosion of NBC News anchor Brian Williams and his article will give you insight into both Williams and Carr, (and the delicate balance between fame and trust), if you take the time to read it.
You can read more about David Carr at the NYT website. Or, for the visually-inspired crowd, watch Page One, a documentary about The Times, in which Carr has a starring role.
This story is touching, weather interested in print or media or not. A man that rose from so little, ended hp with so much and so much to give as well. Carr has influenced a vast amount of people surely, inspiring those who may feel stuck at some points in their lives that they can be successful and turn their lives completely around. The lessons Carr taught us will stay forever.