Since the start of the News International hacking scandal, the other David Carr has shown up and written some tough things about Murdoch. In one column, he even ate some crow, noting that “Mr. Murdoch was hailed as a visionary when he bought MySpace—by me among others—but that did not end up working out so well.” Carr did not draw the obvious lesson, though—that the market often errs, that all those shimmery deals that now seem so brilliant could turn out looking just as bad, and that in the end it’s content that matters most.
Carr’s career has followed a remarkable arc. He began at the Twin Cities Reader, an alternative weekly in Minneapolis, and later spent five years editing Washington City Paper, another alternative. Along the way, he became a coke addict who sold drugs, beat up women, and lost his kids to foster care. (He wrote a best-selling book about his days as a junkie).
At the Times, he began as a grunt on the media beat, but he quickly rose. In 2005 he started the paper’s Carpetbagger blog, in which he handicapped the Oscars and interviewed stars on the red carpet. Since then, he’s been lionized in a documentary, been interviewed by Aaron Sorkin, and written a column that allows him to mix with the famous and powerful. He’s become, in short, the very type of insider that the hard-hitting David Carr would gleefully expose.
This column clearly enunciated something I've sensed for a while, but couldn't put my finger on.
#1 Posted by Paige Gold, CJR on Wed 27 Jun 2012 at 11:44 PM
Carr's most likely writing more fluff because it's so damn hard to report what's behind the facade at these events. It takes time, and our 24-7 culture doesn't lend itself to in-depth writing. It's also hard to be a curmudgeon all the time, especially when everyone's telling you how great you are.
One little thing -- I don't think his kids are still in foster care, are they? I'm pretty sure I saw a pic on Twitter of Carr with his daughters. They all looked relatively happy to me -- a subjective observation, to be sure, but one that conveys as accurate a picture of his success as a father. (I do realize that saying he "lost" his kids to foster care doesn't imply that they are still in foster care, but if you're going to bring it up, maybe you should add some current information.)
#2 Posted by Steve Davies, CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 10:17 AM
Carr has always been enamored with celebrity. I remember sitting next to him at a party in Minneapolis years ago before he went to NY, listening to him tell me boring stories all about his best friendship with Tom Arnold.
#3 Posted by Susan Peterson, CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 12:02 PM
Carr has always been enamored with celebrity. I remember sitting next to him at a party in Minneapolis years ago, listening to boring stories about his best friendship with Tom Arnold.
#4 Posted by Susan Peterson, CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 12:04 PM
Fame--his own and that of others--has started to sand down Carr's flintiness. So has career and familial contentment. Age? Also a factor, perhaps. Still, he's a better read than 95 percent of the journalists out there.
#5 Posted by Dave West, CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 02:15 PM
Carr's a columnist - which comes with some arbitrary and discretion as to what stories he wants to cover and how he covers them - I salivate over his column every week - because of his ability to reach a happy-medium between journalism and commentary, producing copy that pinpoints his readers, like myself, as to where the conversation is in the industry or should be.
Sometimes his column's might be those big hitters, like the Tribune Company's downfall or the piece calling Gannett out for rewarding a retiring CEO who failed to produce results he was hired for.
And sometimes - it might be profiling - yet, is it such a bad thing for Carr to embellish the time he spends with high-profile media celebrities, like Brian Williams, Arron Sorkin or Anthony Bourdain? These people have brilliant minds, why wouldn't you be awe-struck?
To me, it shows that he's just as human as the rest of us - and I like that about him.
#6 Posted by William Dowd, CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 07:30 PM
Carr's specialty--like most Times People--is defending and extolling middle class/middlebrow values. The sycophancy before wealth and celebrity, the breathless touting of new technologies, and the savage bashing of Sam Zell & his minions (a more insipid and lowbrow crew impossible to find helming a major public company) are all of a piece.
#7 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Sun 1 Jul 2012 at 11:39 AM
In his recent CJR piece “The two David Carrs,” Michael Massing praises David Carr, the media columnist for The New York Times, as “a relentless interviewer, incisive analyst and gifted writer” responsible for, among other things, a “stellar” 2010 expose of the Tribune Company. He then laments the David Carr who is “breezy, knowing, star-struck, and insidery,” pointing in particular to David’s
accounts of parties and business meetings where he encounters his subjects.
As David’s business editor for six years, including for his Tribune article, I fail to see the distinction between the “relentless” Carr and the “insidery” one. David, like most reporters on his beat, goes to events and parties where media types congregate. He doesn’t go because he is “star-struck.” He does so to meet sources and to observe his subjects in person, without the protective cover of press releases and PR reps. (Put another way, David goes to Huffington Post parties so that we don’t have to.) David also works the phones and digs up
financial reports, court orders and bankruptcy filings, especially but not exclusively when first-hand interviews are not available, as was the case with the Tribune article.
I question of value of contrasting what seem to be complementary, even overlapping skills, declaring one good and one bad. Observing Rupert Murdoch as he sells his MySpace deal at a Silicon Valley event is different from reporting on the behavior of Tribune executives only insofar as one required an invitation, the other a telephone. What really matters is how all that information is put into context for the reader.
Here, I believe, is where David truly excels. We can quibble about this article or that, but I can’t think of a columnist, media or otherwise, who has done a better job over the past seven years of exposing readers to the seismic shifts underlying the business and explaining what those shifts mean for owners, consumers and employees.
Editors routinely tell their reporters to “get me inside the room.” Whenever I use that hackneyed phrase, I silently add one more: “but please Lord, don’t leave me in there.” David never does.
Best,
Bruce Headlam
Media Editor
The New York Times
#8 Posted by Bruce Headlam, CJR on Tue 3 Jul 2012 at 11:58 AM
Wow, Michael, bitter much? Carr's brilliance is in his observational skills, his ear for conversation and coming this.close to being an insider - without actually becoming one. Can you see that his ability to instantly make a reader feel like he or she is getting an inside look - from someone who is not an insider but among them - is exactly what makes him great?
#9 Posted by Kathleen Coleman, CJR on Tue 3 Jul 2012 at 05:05 PM
Obvious that Murdoch was mugged when he bought MySpace. Even if it was hip, as soon as someone like the Dirty Digger bought it, it would immediately become as unhip as it is possible to be.
#10 Posted by gouchout, CJR on Fri 13 Jul 2012 at 12:00 PM