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Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr
A career-spanning selection of the legendary reporter David Carr’s writing for the New York Times, Washington City Paper, New York Magazine, the Atlantic, and more.
Throughout his 25-year journalistic career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit. His writing was informed both by his own hardships as an addict, and his intense love of the journalist’s craft. His range—from media politics to national politics, from rock ‘n’ roll celebrities to the unknown civil servants who make our daily lives function—was broad and often timeless. Whether he was breaking exclusives about Amazon or mourning Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death or taking aim at editors who valued political trivia over substance, Carr’s voice and concerns remain enormously influential and relevant. In these hundred or so articles, from a range of publications, we read his stories with fresh eyes. Edited by his widow, Jill Rooney Carr, and with an introduction written by one of the many journalists David Carr mentored and promoted, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Final Draft is a singular event in the world of writing news, an art increasingly endangered in these troubled times.
Throughout his 25-year journalistic career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit. His writing was informed both by his own hardships as an addict, and his intense love of the journalist’s craft. His range—from media politics to national politics, from rock ‘n’ roll celebrities to the unknown civil servants who make our daily lives function—was broad and often timeless. Whether he was breaking exclusives about Amazon or mourning Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death or taking aim at editors who valued political trivia over substance, Carr’s voice and concerns remain enormously influential and relevant. In these hundred or so articles, from a range of publications, we read his stories with fresh eyes. Edited by his widow, Jill Rooney Carr, and with an introduction written by one of the many journalists David Carr mentored and promoted, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Final Draft is a singular event in the world of writing news, an art increasingly endangered in these troubled times.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2020
52 people are currently reading
468 people want to read
About the author
David Carr
181 books69 followersDavid Carr was a journalist who wrote for The New York Times. His peers often praised him for his humility and candor.
Carr overcame an addiction to cocaine and wrote about his experiences as an addict in The Night of the Gun. The New Yorker called it "bracingly honest memoir. In sharp and sometimes poetic prose, the author takes a detailed inventory of his years of drug addiction."
In February, 2015 he collapsed in the New York Times newsroom and was pronounced dead shortly after. He was married to Jill Carr and had three children.
Carr overcame an addiction to cocaine and wrote about his experiences as an addict in The Night of the Gun. The New Yorker called it "bracingly honest memoir. In sharp and sometimes poetic prose, the author takes a detailed inventory of his years of drug addiction."
In February, 2015 he collapsed in the New York Times newsroom and was pronounced dead shortly after. He was married to Jill Carr and had three children.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
April 16, 2020
This collection has so much to love. I didn't love it all, no one would given that his wife has chosen pieces from every period of his long career. After the introduction from wife Jill there's a terrific foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates. David Carr gave him his first break, an internship, then his first job, and other jobs. They became close which because of the man Carr was never stopped him from shredding Coates's work when he felt it deserved that. I had no idea of their connection. It was surprising and lovely to read about what a tough editor he was and how harsh he could be when someone made a mistake but that when your piece pleased him "you felt like you hung the moon." (I can't help wondering whether Carr would have criticized that sentence for being cliche.) The intelligence, the love, the talent, Coates has offered his words about Carr from a deep place and that will help those not familiar.
Then we have a lot of essays. From the beginning. And everyone who respected him or wants to familiarize will relate to different ones. There's a lot about his struggles with addiction, about which he'd already written a memoir (before they were everywhere). I'm not someone who reads those memoirs. I support every addict's recovery and people who have passed in and out of my life have gotten the best I could give, but it's a personal thing and for me a bore to read about. It creeps into a lot of his work -- and I get that, just don't remember it doing that -- from the early interview with Tom Arnold who was a newly minted celebrity madly in love with Roseanne (remember them?) and suddenly they pivot to addiction to a short piece decades later on the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman that almost reduces his life to his addiction.
It's not pervasive because that was not his job. Carr wrote columns and covered the media and culture and the media culture for the New York Times, New York Magazine and The Atlantic. I read many at the time and of course these things fade with time and they're such a snapshot. There's a lot of political stuff and pieces dealing with the corporatization and conglomeration of the publishing world, changing journalism, sands shifting under everyone's feet. Those pieces are a stark reminder of what we've lost there and what still remains. There aren't the column inches anymore in most magazines or papers, or the word and page counts, but we are blessed with other great writer-journalists dedicated and devoted to keeping us informed and, at least in my case, sometimes sane. So much of it stands out and so much holds up because of anachronism or prescience or both, as is the case in his 2008 piece on Fox News.
And there's this: whether he was writing about the WWF or Breaking Bad, both of which I could care less about, or his family or cat LaToya or the piece where he confessed he was part of the media's enabling of Bill Cosby, David Carr put his soul on the page in some damn fine writing.
From "That's All Folks!" (12/17/01):
"What does it mean when a corporate visionary such as AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin -- a guy with a reputation for seeing over the hill -- looks into the future and decides he doesn't want to be a part of it?...In the vapor trail of September 11, concerns such as gross revenues seem, well gross."
There are others doing the same job, for better and worse. There will, of course, never be another quite like him. Great writing from a man who did it with fully engaged brain, heart and soul, a guy whose name isn't known outside certain circles but who mentored Ta-Nehisi Coates till he was too sick to, who raised two little girls alone for a while, who raised himself from a cokehead who did time in prison to a voice of reason, wisdom and wit, who shortly before his death collapsed at the New York Times. It is only fitting to give him the last words. These are from 2014, from the syllabus of the journalism class he taught at Boston University until his death in 2015:
"If you text or email during class, I will ignore you as you ignore me. It won't go well."
"I expect you to behave as an adult and will treat you like one. I don't want to parent you -- I want to teach you."
"Excuses: don't make them - they won't work. Stories are supposed to be on the page, and while a spoken-word performance might explain everything, it will excuse nothing."
and, this great man:
"If you are having trouble understanding expectations or assignments or instruction, please speak up. I care a lot about not leaving anybody behind."
Then we have a lot of essays. From the beginning. And everyone who respected him or wants to familiarize will relate to different ones. There's a lot about his struggles with addiction, about which he'd already written a memoir (before they were everywhere). I'm not someone who reads those memoirs. I support every addict's recovery and people who have passed in and out of my life have gotten the best I could give, but it's a personal thing and for me a bore to read about. It creeps into a lot of his work -- and I get that, just don't remember it doing that -- from the early interview with Tom Arnold who was a newly minted celebrity madly in love with Roseanne (remember them?) and suddenly they pivot to addiction to a short piece decades later on the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman that almost reduces his life to his addiction.
It's not pervasive because that was not his job. Carr wrote columns and covered the media and culture and the media culture for the New York Times, New York Magazine and The Atlantic. I read many at the time and of course these things fade with time and they're such a snapshot. There's a lot of political stuff and pieces dealing with the corporatization and conglomeration of the publishing world, changing journalism, sands shifting under everyone's feet. Those pieces are a stark reminder of what we've lost there and what still remains. There aren't the column inches anymore in most magazines or papers, or the word and page counts, but we are blessed with other great writer-journalists dedicated and devoted to keeping us informed and, at least in my case, sometimes sane. So much of it stands out and so much holds up because of anachronism or prescience or both, as is the case in his 2008 piece on Fox News.
And there's this: whether he was writing about the WWF or Breaking Bad, both of which I could care less about, or his family or cat LaToya or the piece where he confessed he was part of the media's enabling of Bill Cosby, David Carr put his soul on the page in some damn fine writing.
From "That's All Folks!" (12/17/01):
"What does it mean when a corporate visionary such as AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin -- a guy with a reputation for seeing over the hill -- looks into the future and decides he doesn't want to be a part of it?...In the vapor trail of September 11, concerns such as gross revenues seem, well gross."
There are others doing the same job, for better and worse. There will, of course, never be another quite like him. Great writing from a man who did it with fully engaged brain, heart and soul, a guy whose name isn't known outside certain circles but who mentored Ta-Nehisi Coates till he was too sick to, who raised two little girls alone for a while, who raised himself from a cokehead who did time in prison to a voice of reason, wisdom and wit, who shortly before his death collapsed at the New York Times. It is only fitting to give him the last words. These are from 2014, from the syllabus of the journalism class he taught at Boston University until his death in 2015:
"If you text or email during class, I will ignore you as you ignore me. It won't go well."
"I expect you to behave as an adult and will treat you like one. I don't want to parent you -- I want to teach you."
"Excuses: don't make them - they won't work. Stories are supposed to be on the page, and while a spoken-word performance might explain everything, it will excuse nothing."
and, this great man:
"If you are having trouble understanding expectations or assignments or instruction, please speak up. I care a lot about not leaving anybody behind."
April 24, 2020
I loved this a lot less than I hoped to. Most of the selected articles showed their age. For example, now knowing what we do, Hillary was right all along. Or maybe that was the point. I had a hard time separating the out of date content from the writing style. I think there's a better compilation to be made some day.
August 9, 2020
These collected works of the late David Carr span his career from freelancer to editor of the Twin Cities Reader to Washington City Paper to The New York Times. Topics range from his own addictions to the AIDS crisis to 9/11 to assorted major stories in media criticism. Pretty much all of it is though-provoking and spot-on, as expected. It made me grateful for his voice, but also made me aware of how much it's missed.
April 29, 2020
I discovered David Carr’s writing about five years after his autobiography, The Night of The Gun, was published. It was filled with roller coasters, hayrides, abject failures and successes, love, hate, and, mainly, with a deep reflection of what was real. David Carr could take the piss out of himself, which is, perhaps, what I find to be the most prominent quality in a person.
David Carr took no shit.
When he worked as editor he didn’t take it from his writers and he didn’t take it from his daughters, as one of them, Erin Lee Carr, recanted to and fro in her well-written memoir, All That You Leave Behind.
His autobiography was testament to where he had been as a journalist: a person who once wanted to be Hunter S. Thompson, but had since moved on. He had the rock ‘n’ roll in him, preferably sans drugs, and it came out on the page, well arranged, all the pieces in place.
This anthology, which is posthumously released, collects some of Carr’s earliest writing up to the last pieces he wrote in 2015, the year he died, including his syllabus for his students.
He was steeped in his recovery from alcohol and drug abuse and it showed from the start. Much like David Simon and the other people who made TV-show The Wire, Carr felt deeply about social issues and the people behind it all. And yet, he never fell away from properly reporting about his subject, however he may feel about it.
One of Carr’s best talents was his ability to tersely convey a sentiment without pouring it into one big container of slime; he could be reminiscent without being smarmy, a talent that other writers often lack.
My only gripe about some of the articles are that they’re snapshots of points in time which are not framed by context; when Carr writes for Washington City Paper, he gets personal on a level that is, frankly, a bit dull. The Neil Young interview is a bit of a hagiography verging on advertisement. Other than that, he keeps his flame burning.
His take on reality TV is still nice, as written in 2001:
His writing on 9/11 is acute:
His wife, Jill Rooney Carr, frames his writing best; from the introduction of this book:
This book should be read by persons who are not only interested in journalism, social issues, Carr himself, and the craft of both reading and writing, but also in gaining insight into modern-day American critical thought.
David Carr took no shit.
When he worked as editor he didn’t take it from his writers and he didn’t take it from his daughters, as one of them, Erin Lee Carr, recanted to and fro in her well-written memoir, All That You Leave Behind.
His autobiography was testament to where he had been as a journalist: a person who once wanted to be Hunter S. Thompson, but had since moved on. He had the rock ‘n’ roll in him, preferably sans drugs, and it came out on the page, well arranged, all the pieces in place.
This anthology, which is posthumously released, collects some of Carr’s earliest writing up to the last pieces he wrote in 2015, the year he died, including his syllabus for his students.
He was steeped in his recovery from alcohol and drug abuse and it showed from the start. Much like David Simon and the other people who made TV-show The Wire, Carr felt deeply about social issues and the people behind it all. And yet, he never fell away from properly reporting about his subject, however he may feel about it.
An early marriage to a supportive woman fell apart under the weight of drug abuse. I was losing track of my old friends. I began to think of myself as some kind of half-assed gangster, buying and selling drugs and intimidating those who didn’t have the money when I needed it.
One of Carr’s best talents was his ability to tersely convey a sentiment without pouring it into one big container of slime; he could be reminiscent without being smarmy, a talent that other writers often lack.
Brian Coyle made certain that his fight to live with AIDS became a very public one. Dying with the disease was necessarily a private matter. Coyle’s death took its course over two months in the Southside house he loved, in the Whittier neighborhood he fought for, in the city he helped lead.
My only gripe about some of the articles are that they’re snapshots of points in time which are not framed by context; when Carr writes for Washington City Paper, he gets personal on a level that is, frankly, a bit dull. The Neil Young interview is a bit of a hagiography verging on advertisement. Other than that, he keeps his flame burning.
His take on reality TV is still nice, as written in 2001:
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard suggested at about the same time as Real World’s debut that America had become little more than the sum of its mediated impulses. The nation as backlot is really just a matter of two worlds—one supposedly real and one a representation—finally meeting in the middle. Disney, having just completed Disney’s California Adventure, could finish the build-out with an assist from broader cultural forces. Add a few more cameras to those middle places, and you have a broadcast version of The Matrix, a collective hallucination that makes a sitcom seem entirely beside the point.
His writing on 9/11 is acute:
To have the attention of a nation is hardly novel in a city that’s been ground zero for more than a century. Living in the Mae West of municipalities, New Yorkers are used to people staring. People live here because they want to be noticed. But New York’s starring role in history’s most viewed piece of videotape—a whole new genre of terror porn—brings with it not just more notoriety but unwanted sympathy. New Yorkers can stand anything save the nation’s pity. However well-meaning, and however important for those who give and those who receive, the sympathy alters only the isolation of the tragedy, not its dimensions. And once the questions from distant relations switched from Where were you? to How are you? people here did not know how to respond.
As with the huge quantities of blood that arrived after the attack, New York is having trouble finding places to store all the consolation. Everyone in the city is so busy putting on a stiff upper lip—Damn that bin Laden and the disappeared 1 and 9 trains; I guess we’ll have to walk—that the embrace of our countrymen becomes one more thing to put up with. “The department moves forward,” one firefighter told me, speaking with more firmness than defiance, even as he dug for 350 of his colleagues two days after the towers fell. “This thing was around a long time before me, and it will be around a long time after me.”
His wife, Jill Rooney Carr, frames his writing best; from the introduction of this book:
In the aftermath of his death, I found that his words were still with me. I reread his magazine pieces, his spot-on profiles, his reporting in Hollywood for the Times (as the Carpetbagger, a mission he completed, mingling with show business media and film aristocracy in a $169 tux). David could go high, he could go low, and everywhere in between because he was fearless and deeply curious about the human condition.
This book should be read by persons who are not only interested in journalism, social issues, Carr himself, and the craft of both reading and writing, but also in gaining insight into modern-day American critical thought.
May 27, 2025
I first encountered David Carr when I read his book, "The Night of the Gun". If you don't know who he was, start with that one. After that, I couldn't get enough of his writing. When he died in 2015, I again went down the internet rabbit hole to find as much as I could by him. To say I miss him is to belabor the point. Carr was a reporter, editor, teacher, and columnist. He worked for various publications, including The Atlantic and The New York Times, but he started as a coked-up drug addict with twin premature girls to raise on his own. His wife chose this compilation of some of his writings set mostly in chronological order. His voice and his indignation still resonate within them, but they must now be read as history. They stand up, even though I had to Google some of the people who were big then but are now forgotten. David's last column for the New York Times was about the media and ran in the business section. He would have had quite a take on what has happened in the last ten years.
June 29, 2020
I first heard of David Carr in a podcast, and saw him in action as the star and narrator of the NYTimes documentary Page One. He is an interesting character, and watching that immediately affects how you read his work, so watch at your own risk. his writing is insightful and caring, as though every subject has some quality that he finds to mirror his own. Collected by his widowed wife, there is also that same caring in her preface. With and incredibly moving introduction by the great essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates, the book was a riveting insight into one of the most significant journalist of the 21st century.
May 23, 2021
I've never met David Carr, nor did I know who he was but I love reading essays by different people and in Final Draft, I have a sense who he is. David Carr dies of cancer but through his writing we get a sense of mortality through others dealing with deadly diseases before his own battle began. The book shows his personality when talking to celebrities without being to much on himself. David seemed to hold his colleagues in great esteem and care and what it means to be a good journalist. I wish I could've met David but his works can be inspiring to all who read it.
May 31, 2023
I first noticed Carr when he wrote the "On the Media" column for the NYT. It always crackled with intelligence. I read his autobiography, Night of the Gun, and loved it. But this one is almost better. It's more inspirational. You can see his early talent sharpen as it goes. If you're any kind of writer, this collection is an inspiration. I reach for it when I'm stuck on a piece. His clarity and honesty work wonders for unclogging the pipes.
June 2, 2020
David Carr is a writer of exceptional ability. He injects much the same vigor and humor to his work as did Hunter S. Thompson in his early days, with the added advantage of his perspective being rooted in -- not loosely based on -- reality. "Night of the Gun" was a tour de force. "Final Draft" is a great pleasure. I wish it were possible that there were more to come.
October 26, 2021
I purchased this book at an independent bookstore. I picked it up now and then and read an esssay or two. I was not familiar with David Carr prior to buying this book. Regrettably it did not hold my attention. Most of the essays are dated going back to the 90s during the Clinton years. I saw an essay about Christopher Hitchens that caught my eye but not much else did.
June 9, 2020
Fantastic writing, interesting and informative, short pieces Mr Carr wrote in the recent past, collected by his widow. He is the most insightful writer of his own past that I have come across. His memoir, "Night of the Gun", is also a must-read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2020
I read this book because I really enjoyed his memoir "Night of the Gun". The articles in this collection that I liked the best were the personal ones, as well as the early articles written while he was still in Minneapolis.
March 18, 2020
Great articles and essays! Really appreciated the range of interests and topics covered.
April 25, 2020
4.5. Not all of these pieces age as well as others, but who doesn't miss David Carr?
April 26, 2020
One of the most pleasurable and beneficial books I’ve read in a long time, from cover to cover
December 1, 2020
Fantastic book. Great essays. So glad I stumbled upon this.
In his era, David Carr was one of the top 5 reasons I read the NYT.
In his era, David Carr was one of the top 5 reasons I read the NYT.
January 2, 2021
I am biased. David was a personal friend. His humanity and wit comes through loudand clear jnthese collected essays
January 4, 2021
David Carr’s work is always a pleasure to read. I’m looking forward to reading his memoir next.
April 30, 2021
I skipped around and read about half of this book. It was quite good.
March 31, 2022
meh. the good stuff could’ve been ‘collected’ in less than 200 pages.
August 22, 2025
long live journalism
September 18, 2020
Writings feels dated. Very cozy with media people, his dislike of Ruth Shalit felt uncomfortably personal. Another white man who thought he knew everything. Also, the fact that his syllabus was filled with his own work irritated me. I’ve never known a professor to do that who wasn’t a complete narcissist.
January 21, 2023
David Carr was a figure that was floating around, but his importance or appeal I never directly felt. This collection of his work as a reporter and journalist was interesting. He had a remarkable capacity for empathy and directed anger that shines in his work throughout. There were essays that I didn’t immediately love and made the book drag, but overall it was a nice read. I just don’t feel the need to read through this again at any point. The pieces that deal with his struggle with addiction head-on and where he is addressing the addictions of others are the most humane and relatable moments of this book. If you only read those pieces, it is work borrowing this book.
September 5, 2020
I really enjoyed reading (actually listening to) David Carr’s work. He has a unique outlook on life—well earned from the challenges he faced, at times funny and at other times full of sorrow. But always honest and truthful. The essays that took my breath away were his pieces about 9/11, and in particular how New York and New Yorkers have changed. I also very much enjoyed his early work in Minneapolis—both his essays on being a dad and his interview with Minneapolis City Councilman Brian Coyle on his coming out with AIDS.
February 17, 2023
A wonderful and worthwhile companion to the memoir "The Night of the Gun."
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews