New York Times columnist David Carr dies at 58

LOS ANGELES — David Carr, the iconoclastic media columnist for the New York Times, died Thursday while working at the Times’ office, according a report posted late Thursday on the Times’ website. He was 58.

The circumstances surrounding Carr’s death, which came as a shock to media biz watchers, were unclear.

Carr wrote the Media Equation column for the Times’ Business section. He was also known to showbiz figures from his stint several years ago as the Times’ award season correspondent for the Carpetbagger blog.

Carr was prominently featured in the 2011 docu “Page One: Inside the New York Times.” He joined the Times’ in 2002. Before that, he was a contributing writer to the Atlantic Monthly and New York magazine. In the mid-1990s he was editor of Washington, D.C.’s City Paper.

Carr was candid about his past battles with drug addiction. In 2008 he published the non-fiction book “Night of the Gun,” which revisited his experiences as a drug abuser and used traditional reporting techniques to fill in gaps and misperceptions from his own memory.

Carr’s survivors including his wife, Jill Rooney Carr, and three daughters.