The media and entertainment industries mourned the death of acclaimed New York Times media reporter David Carr on Friday, who collapsed in the Times newsroom late Thursday night and was pronounced dead at a New York City hospital a short time later. Carr was 58.

Carr, who wrote about everything from the magazine industry to the red carpet—including his personal battle with drug addiction—most recently helmed the paper’s Media Equation column that focuses on the ever-evolving television, publishing, and digital landscapes.

The New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet praised Carr as “the finest media reporter of his generation,” while publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. described him as “an indispensable guide to modern media.”

Last June, Carr interviewed former Viacom CEO Tom Freston and VICE Media CEO Shane Smith during a keynote conversation at PromaxBDA: The Conference in June 2014.

Carr’s wit, charm, and playful sense of humor were on full display from the moment he took the stage, gently cajoling Smith into perhaps making news that afternoon at the New York Hilton Midtown (while name-checking Nancy Grace and the “Tot Mom.”)

The previous night, Twitter was “melting,” as Carr puts it in the video above, following the news that Time Warner was in advanced talks to purchase VICE Media for $1.1 billion (with a b).

“Even if I was talking to anyone, hypothetically, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it,” Smith said in side-stepping the question. (Time Warner later pulled out, and A+E Networks took a 10 percent stake in Vice).

Lack of news aside, the episode was a brief glimpse into a personality that had come in recent years to be a major face of the New York Times brand, especially after the premiere of the 2011 documentary Page One: Inside The New York Times.

The Minnesota native joined The Times in 2002, after stints at alt weeklies in Minneapolis and Washington D.C., as well as New York and The Atlantic magazines.

At The Times, he drew attention in Hollywood after launching the paper’s Carpetbagger blog, chronicling what the paper called “the news and nonsense from the red carpet during awards season.”

Carr, who lived in Montclair, N.J., is survived by his wife Jill Rooney Carr, and daughters Maddie, Erin, and Meagan.

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