Times Columnist Uncovers His Darkest Story

Several months after Anna gave birth to their twins in 1988, Carr went into detox and then a six-month stint in rehab while the girls were placed in foster care. He emerged, won custody of the kids and tried to pull his life together, only to be sidelined by cancer of the immune system. But he beat the disease and started freelancing.

Somehow, Carr landed a job as editor of the Twin Cities Reader, where his management skills included complimenting a female staffer on her "nice rack." When he became editor of Washington City Paper in 1995, Carr, having grown up in "a land of white people who eat white food," says he found "Chocolate City" a mystery. He quickly stirred controversy with such headlines as "Black Hole: Why Isn't the Black Community Producing Leaders Worth Following?"

Carr married again, had another baby, moved to New York and, in 2002, began working at the Times, where his journalistic duties include covering the Oscars hoopla each year. At this point, the reader expects the memoir to sprint to a how-I-overcame-it-all finish. But that doesn't happen. After 14 years of sobriety, Carr starts drinking again, and occasionally doing coke.

"I decided I was going to be a nice suburban alcoholic, that I could be normal like other guys and go out for a pop after work," he says. "That didn't work out too well for me. I had to quit pretending I was normal."

One day, while sloshed, he drove his daughters to his weekend cabin in the Adirondacks and almost hit an oncoming car, saved only by their shouts. His wife, Jill Rooney Carr, begged him not to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and, as she feared, he drank his way through New Orleans. Carr suffered alcohol withdrawal, told a Times editor about his addiction and checked back into rehab.

The relapse strained relations with his wife and kids, as Carr acknowledges in the book. But Jill Carr says she's comfortable with his literary soul-baring.

"I married the man with that story and I knew 99 percent of it," she says. "We were very clear from the outset that this was something we'd have to live with. I'm not nervous. There are people who'll love it. Others will find it despicable. My true friends and family will always be there for us."

But some wounds are not so easily healed. Daughter Erin, now 20, is still angry at her dad for the near-accident in the car, "the most irresponsible thing you could ever do." The other, Meagan, tells him: "I knew you were going to screw up . . . but I never pictured you throwing your life away."

Times Executive Editor Bill Keller says the book only increased his respect for Carr. "Unlike so many memoirists who have been caught making things up, Dave went out and reported on his own life," he says. "A guy who pulls himself out of the swamp, keeps his demons in check, turns his career around and raises a loving family has demonstrated a kind of character that is in short supply these days."

Carr has been sober for nearly three years, though he's battling an addiction to cigarettes, but still considers himself one drink away from disaster. He has made plans to attend group counseling meetings while he is on book tour and covering the political conventions.

His past travails have not entirely escaped notice. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Channel, for instance, has called Carr a "far-left zealot" and "former crack addict." Carr says that some sources, unhappy with his reporting, try to use his sordid history as leverage. And that, he says, is one more reason to publish the book.

"There is value in taking custody of the information," Carr says. "I am who I am and everyone knows it."

News You Can't Use

The incredible shrinking newspaper is starting to lose some of its old-fashioned foundations.

Nearly two-thirds of the papers surveyed by the Project for Excellence in Journalism have cut back on space for foreign news at a time when America is fighting two wars. Nearly half say they are devoting fewer resources to covering such stories; the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and Baltimore Sun have closed their remaining overseas bureaus in the past three years. A mere 10 percent say foreign news is "essential."

National news hasn't fared much better, with 57 percent of newspapers saying they have cut the space devoted to such issues. More than a third have reduced business coverage. Science and arts reporting is also shriveling. All this, says the project, "reduces the marketplace of ideas."

On the rise: a 62 percent jump in community news and a 49 percent rise in state and local news -- especially in education -- where papers are arguably the most indispensable. Ninety-seven percent of editors at the 259 papers surveyed called local news "very essential" to their product.

With the business being squeezed by declining revenue and circulation, six in 10 papers reported that they cut full-time staff in the past three years -- a figure that rises to 85 percent at newspapers with daily sales over 100,000.

And how are readers reacting to these leaner publications?

Diane McFarlin, publisher of the Sarasota, Fla., Herald-Tribune, told the group she has gotten no letters of complaint about less local news or fewer investigative pieces. "What I get is hate mail about taking the TV listings, cutting the size of the crossword or moving the comics around. That's what enrages people."