Who

Carr is a former crack addict-turned-media columnist and culture reporter at the New York Times. He's also the author of 2008's The Night of the Gun.

Backstory

Born and bred in Minnesota, Carr got his start at the alternative weekly Twin Cities Reader in the early 1980s, and watched his career almost go up in smoke a decade later as he fell into the dark hole of a serious drug addiction. Several trips to rehab managed to set him straight, and he quickly resumed his journalism career, rising to the post of editor of the Twin Cities Reader before leaving in 1995 to join Washington City Paper. He spent five years penning the alternative rag's media-focused "Paper Trail" column before decamping to New York in 2000 to cover media for Inside.com, the ill-fated media site launched by Kurt Andersen, Michael Hirschorn and Deanna Brown. After the site was shuttered in 2001, Carr contributed to The Atlantic and New York, joining the Times in 2002 to take over Alex Kuczynski's magazine publishing column.

These days, Carr writes the weekly media column "The Media Equation," for the paper's Monday business section. He's also the Times' go-to man for Hollywood awards reportage: Since 2005, he's edited nytimes.com's annual Carpetbagger blog covering the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Medical file

Carr's drug abuse—he was addicted to cocaine and crack for several years but dabbled with a dozen other drugs, too—was compounded by a diagnosis of Hodgkin's shortly after he sobered up. (He walks with a pronounced stoop because of the radiation treatment.) A smoker, Carr also suffers from Type 2 diabetes.

In print

In 2006, Carr earned a $300,000 advance with Simon & Schuster (brokered by lit agent Flip Brophy) to tell the story of descent into drug abuse. The book that followed, The Night of the Gun, was published in 2008.

Personal

Carr and his wife, Jill Rooney Carr, live in Montclair and have a daughter named Madeleine. (Jill works at the Montclair Art Museum.) Carr also has twin girls named Megan and Erin with a former girlfriend named Anna, a onetime drug dealer who Carr lived with for several years. Carr won custody of the kids after sobering up.