The David Carr Generation

At the time of his death in early 2015, David Carr was a prominent media columnist for The New York Times. He edited the alt-weekly Washington City Paper in the mid-1990s, where he cultivated some of the great journalistic talent of our day. He was both a blunt and colorful writer, with a gift for similes that would make readers snigger with pleasure. “To call something the most popular podcast might seem a little like identifying the tallest leprechaun,” he wrote in one of his Media Equation columns for the Times.

Carr got his start in journalism at the Twin Cities Reader, where he eventually became editor. He then went on to edit the Washington City Paper. Years earlier, he’d struggled with addictions to crack and alcohol, and he eventually turned those rank memories into a bestselling memoir. Along with his duties as a columnist, Carr taught a course on new media at Boston University, where I was his graduate teaching assistant. Amid his kaleidoscope of accomplishments and obligations, Carr still found the time to guide dozens of young people in the arduous process of shaping careers of their own. He did it for me: Carr set me up with the interview that would turn into my first real job in journalism. He died just two weeks before I got my offer letter.

Carr had an unusual gift for recognizing young talent, and an equally unusual willingness to pull that talent