Carr on Colbert Tonight
By Brian Lambert
The best way to avoid burying the lede is to stick it in the hed.
I've been wracking my alleged brain trying to remember the last time one of my n'er do well cronies was a guest on The Colbert Report. Oh wait . . . never. Until tonight when David Carr, no longer a member of the n'er do well class, drops by America's O'Reilly antidote, Stephen Colbert, to plug his new book, The Night of the Gun, the saga—and I do mean saga—of his fall into crackhead abyss here in the Twin Cities back in the late '80s.
As someone who knew Carr before, during, and after, I've already had my way with him, a couple times. Both here, in the current issue of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, and a couple years ago in The Rake. Now, the national press can play catch-up. Which they are doing with a vengeance.
I've kidded Carr that being the media columnist for The New York Times might—MIGHT, I say—have an insulating effect on the rest of the national media and maybe even the notoriously snarky Manhattan literati, assuming the book was at least arguably good. (It's a very good read.) I mean, are you, sour little books editor for the New York Whatever, really going to rip the Times's media gorilla just for your personal, petty amusement? Are you going to make an enemy of a guy who can dismiss you through omission? I don't think so.
At any rate, early reviews and reception has been favorable to fawning. Like this long piece in New York Magazine.
What interests me here are the references to Carr's obsessive qualities that make him uniquely suited to the web and establishing a foothold in the Internet's dawning days. Obviously, as the piece notes, it helps —big time—to have talent. In particular, the kind of talent that is skeptical, competitive, and omnivorous. Carr's ability to cross-reference unexpected cultural imagery, factoids, and stir with . . . an unabashedly personal voice . . . is vital to the work he's doing in his regular Monday Times column and his video blog The Carpetbagger (where he swims in the industry minutiae of Oscar season.)
It is my experience, and that of others here in the Twin Cities, that neither paper has—as yet—developed an online personality the equivalent of what the Times has in Carr. More to the point, the personal voice that is essential to web success is still largely repressed. You can argue this is a combination of factors. Lack of institutional stature. (Neither paper remotely replicates the standing of the Times.) Lack of individual talent. (Is there anyone like Carr out there?) And, my favorite, a woefully constricted sense of imagination on the part of managers green lighting online endeavors.
That is another way of saying they either don't have any instinct for web-style shtick, or they are incapable of dealing with the monsters you create when you encourage personality.
I've said before, there is no shortage of characters at both papers who could be exploited for their web-worthy iconoclasm and distinctive voice. But neither paper appears capable of risking anything to push those characters forward in a way that would make them—the horror!—"representative" of the paper itself.
At the rate both are sinking, this timid, "responsible" approach to the Internet is more like a drowning man mistaking an anchor for a buoy.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
I hate to be shallow (even more so than usual) considering Carr is your buddy and I've told you numerous times how much I enjoyed you, Carr and Eskola on your 1980's local access talk show. But isn't his memoir just another in a long line of books about drug use and redemption? Other than the fact that it's not imagined, how is it any different or better or more enlightening than, say, James Frey? My reaction upon reading the story in the recent Sunday Times Mag or wherever was ho-hum. Maybe I'm jaded, but haven't we read this story 1,000 times before?
I suppose this means I won't be invited to the book signing at your house.
LAMBERT: I've been saying that I am no judge of "junkie lit". I just don't read the stuff. But Carr's book, the junkie saga withstanding, has what I've been calling "verve and vernacular". The boy can write, and here he is cut loose.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on August 5, 2008 at 3:07 PM
Lambert: "It is my experience, and that of others here in the Twin Cities, that neither paper has—as yet—developed an online personality the equivalent of what the Times has in Carr."
This assumes there is any sizeable appetite for the equivalent of what the Times has in Carr in his native Twin Cities. I see no evidence of it.
LAMBERT: Well, if not a media critic, at least a full-throated metro columnist ...
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on August 5, 2008 at 3:49 PM
Beautiful.
Congrats, DC.
Posted by: bertram jr on August 5, 2008 at 4:24 PM
Nick Coleman isn't full-throated?
LAMBERT: Oh indeed he is. But you don't exactly see the Strib pushing him on their web site, do you? He has opinions, you know.
Posted by: David Brauer on August 6, 2008 at 11:49 AM
David: Camera presence is not a gift necessarily yoked to the ability to write a compelling lede graf.
Carr has it, as those of us who've worked and hung with him over the years would have anticipated before he ever got in front of a video camera. But most people, it's been my experience, decidedly do not.
Further, there are likely not any editors at the Strib who know it when they see it, much less how to cultivate it. Print journalists hold broadcasters in low esteem and think producing TV is no more demanding than shooting some home video.
It would appear from what I've seen on the Strib's website thus far, they are finding there's more to it than they allowed themselves to believe. In fairness, Lileks gets TV and has the chops for it. But he is an aberration there.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on August 7, 2008 at 1:14 PM
Star Tribune advertising Nick Coleman's opinions?
Maybe it's because we have heard Nick's five opinions every week for 20 years.
(Stadiums, Bridge, Indian Nick Names, Gas Tax, Republicans are evil).
LAMBERT: Do they have ANYONE with opinions up on that website? If Kersten is your cup of tea ...
Posted by: Michael Thomas on August 7, 2008 at 6:29 PM
I found answers to my questions posed above in Andrew O'Hehir's piece on the book and interview with David Carr found in today's Salon.com. I recommend it to all your devotees, but not deft enough to provide a link. Perhaps you could do so.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on August 8, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Despite what reader's of this board feel, Kersten's opinions are just as valid as Coleman's. They are pretty evenly promoted.
LAMBERT: My point is this: Are either of them on the website -- in video form? No. The Strib is following the local TV approach and seeking to be loved by ... most.
Posted by: Michael Thomas on August 8, 2008 at 1:14 PM
Carr's book is well written. He takes the "I was a junkie" genre to a new level by interviewing the other charachters in his stories in addition to sharing his own point of view. He got their feedback on who he thought he was in various stories of his life and he compared notes. This made it interesting. His investigative journalism talents, that he was always good at, shine through here though the tables are turned on himself.
LAMBERT: By all indications the book has air under its wings.
Posted by: Stephanie Hansen on August 11, 2008 at 8:26 AM
I never read memoirs, but I liked Carr's because, as advertised, it is the anti-memoir memoir. I've never met him, but I think the reviewer for New York magazine got it right when she wrote, "Who is this guy?" And she's known him for years.
Also, wasn't it Carr who wrote a negative profile of Bob Yates - in MSP - circa 1990? It was the first time I considered that, behind the scenes, Yates might not be a good guy. I seem to remember Bob referring to the piece on air and calling Carr a drug addict.
LAMBERT: I had forgotten that Yates piece. As Carr likes to say, he "stapled" Bob pretty good.
Posted by: frogster on August 21, 2008 at 7:31 AM
Stephanie,
Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane.
Bob
Posted by: Bob Yates on October 28, 2008 at 10:07 AM
Well, just one man's opinion, but I used to do radio with Bob Yates. Many years ago, Yates plucked me from the obscurity of the Twin Cities Reader and put me on his air. Nothing but good times. Bob had the ability to meld the the intellectual and vulgar into a palatable amalgam that a broad range of listeners could enjoy. These two bergs could use a guy with his agile mind and coruscating wit in what has devolved into a largely a vapid radio market.
But, Bob, in fairness to Stephanie, it was this "frogster" person who gratuitously brought you into the discussion.
LAMBERT: "Stephanie" sounds cuter than "frogster".
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on October 28, 2008 at 3:56 PM
Sorry to have dredged up old memories, Bob, but, geez, this blog entry was almost 3 months old when you replied. I sincerely hope I'm wrong about this, but I have this indelible image of you. You're shambling about your house like some latter day Norma Desmond. Tapes of your old shows run on a continuous loop and you're googling your name every few hours, hoping not everyone has forgotten you. "Hey, how'd I miss this? My name came up on Lambert's blog back in August..." A suggestion, if you haven't done so already: Invite Dubay to move in. He can be Von Stroheim to your Swanson. When he's not serving you, you two can recreate your old KFAN show (for an audience of two) while the cobwebs multiply amongst the dust.
Posted by: frogster on October 30, 2008 at 6:55 AM