New York Times media columnist David Carr dead at 58

Carr penned the widely read Media Equation column that appeared in the Monday business section and focused on "media as it intersects with business, culture and government," according to his biography on the New York Times website.

He also reported for the paper's culture section and featured prominently in "Page One: Inside The New York Times," a 2011 documentary on the publication.

The Times said Carr collapsed in the paper's newsroom and was discovered around 9 p.m. local time. He was later pronounced dead at Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital.

Carr moderated a panel discussion earlier on Thursday on "Citizenfour," the documentary that chronicles the leaking of documents by former U.S. government security contractor Edward Snowden, with director Laura Poitras, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and Snowden, the paper said.

"He was the finest media reporter of his generation, a remarkable and funny man who was one of the leaders of our newsroom," Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet wrote in an email circulated to staff, the paper said.

Carr was the second major force in U.S. journalism to die in the past two days.

On Wednesday, veteran CBS News correspondent Bob Simon was killed in a car accident in New York City at the age of 73. Simon's decades-long career included covering major overseas conflicts and surviving Iraqi prison.

Carr joined the New York Times in 2002 covering the magazine publishing industry, after working as a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and New York magazine, the paper said.

Earlier in his career, Carr was editor of the alternative Washington D.C. weekly, Washington City Paper, and editor of the Minneapolis-based alternative weekly, the Twin Cities Reader, the Times said. In 2000, he joined Inside.com, a news site about the publishing industry.

Tributes to the writer quickly poured in over social media after his death.

"Heartbroken about David Carr's death. Great journalist, but more important, great human being. Will miss him," tweeted Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post.

Carr's memoir, "The Night of the Gun," which centered on his recovery from drug addiction, was published in 2008 by Simon and Schuster.

"I now inhabit a life I don’t deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end any time soon," he wrote at the end of his memoir.

Carr lived in Montclair, New Jersey, and is survived by his wife Jill Rooney Carr and his three children.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Kim Coghill and Paul Tait)