For a while, a few years ago, there was a weekly video on the New York Times website called The Sweet Spot, taped during off hours in the cafeteria on the 14th floor. The idea was that it would be an informal, incisive discussion of various developments in the world of culture and media. Sometimes it managed to live up to its name, and sometimes it didn’t, but for me the show — or webcast, or schmooze fest, or whatever it was — had a much simpler reason for being: It guaranteed that I would have a few hours a week in the company of David Carr. For anyone who cared about journalism, there was simply no better place to be.

David’s public contribution to the profession — his columns and feature stories, his interviews and investigations — is part of the record, and part of the glory of this newspaper. Until his death on Thursday, he covered every corner of the media business (including, sometimes, his own employer) with analytical acumen, ethical rigor and gumshoe tenacity.

He managed to see the complexities of digital-age journalism from every angle, and to write about it with unparalleled clarity and wit. His prose was a marvel of wry Midwestern plainness, sprinkled with phrases his colleagues will only ever think of as Carrisms. Something essential was “baked in.” Someone was always competing to be the tallest leprechaun.