Listen to Carr punch those fucking keys. Listen to what Carr says.

David Carr, one of the country's best newspaper writers, died last night. He collapsed in the New York Times newsroom; earlier that night, he'd hosted a panel discussion between Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras. He was 58.

Anything I could say about Carr—and I could say a lot—has been better said by others. That Times obit is well worth reading

His plain-spoken style was sometimes blunt, and searingly honest about himself. The effect was both folksy and sophisticated, a voice from a shrewd and well-informed skeptic.

—and so is the one at Poynter. And I can't think of a better time to rewatch Page One: Inside the New York Times, the 2011 doc that basically featured Carr as its star (the video above is a scene from that film). Back when Page One came out, I wrote for the Mercury that an alternate title might be David Carr Is a Badass Motherfucker. I stand by this.

But the best stuff to read and watch is the stuff from Carr himself. Here's his AMA. Here's an NPR interview from a few years ago, in which he talked about how he worked:

I don't want to be sort of a poodle dog when I'm out there and a friendly sort of presence in people's lives, and then come back and do something that's really mean or aggressive.

And if it's going to be a hard story, one of the things I always say is: This is going to be a really serious story, and I'm asking very serious questions. And it behooves you to think it through and really work on answering and defending yourself because this is not a friendly story.

And if they don't engage, I just tell them: Well, you know what? You better put the nut-cup on, because this isn't going to be pleasant for anybody.

Digging through the Times archives for old episodes of "The Sweet Spot," Carr's video series with Times movie critic A.O. Scott, is probably what I'm going to spend a good part of today doing. On his own, Carr was brutally smart and wildly charming; when he teamed up with Scott, the result was a vaguely odd-couple pairing that I remember thinking could have worked anywhere, for anything: co-hosting the Oscars, bickering in a buddy cop movie, or, as it worked out, just shooting the shit about whatever they felt like chatting about. Scott wrote this last night.

The Times tweeted this:


I can't think of any other contemporary writer for whom such a link would feel appropriate on the occasion of his or her death. Usually when someone dies, it makes sense to curate, to cull, to find the best of things. But that's the thing with Carr's writing: I've never been sorry that I read something he wrote, and I've never never felt as if it wasn't a good thing to do, or like I wasn't a smarter and better (and, frequently, happier) person for having read what he wrote or reported. Or for having listened to what he had to say.

So click that link. There are 1,776 David Carr stories from the Times. Jump in anywhere. Read some David Carr today.