NEW YORK (AP) — New York Times media columnist David Carr died of complications from metastatic lung cancer, according to autopsy results released Saturday.
Julie Bolcer (BOHL-suhr), a spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner’s office, said the autopsy shows heart disease also contributed to his death.
Carr, 58, collapsed at the newspaper’s headquarters and died on Thursday.
He wrote the newspaper’s Media Equation column and penned a memoir about his fight with drug addiction. He was lauded as “the finest media reporter of his generation” by Times’ Executive Editor Dean Baquet.
Carr’s 2008 memoir “The Night of the Gun” traces his rise from cocaine addict to single dad raising twin girls to sobered-up media columnist for the Times. The book also detailed his life as a cancer patient as he battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
A spokeswoman for the Times declined to comment on whether Carr’s illness was known at the newspaper.
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Given that 1) one of his colleagues (not from the NYT, and probably not particularly close) said among his other remembrances on Twitter that he was quitting his two-cigarette a day smoking habit immediately so that the same thing doesn’t happen to him, and 2) he looked frighteningly skeletal in his most recent pictures, I find it hard to believe they didn’t know at the Times, even though it hasn’t been mentioned publicly in the news so far.
If true, why would it have been mentioned publicly. There are some things that are just none of your damn business, even for the transparency handwringers.
There isn’t any reason why it would, it’s just the article gives the implication that this was some big surprise to everyone.
He was extremely thin and had a series of serious, publicly detailed health problems. So, it seems likely that this disease was a surprise, But the New York ME doesn’t explain how lung cancer would cause a sudden collapse instead of a steady decline, even if rapid. But really, none of that is very important, his loss is a great one for journalism and us all.