The New York Times has named Jim Rutenberg as its new media columnist, filling the role left vacant after the sudden death of David Carr almost a year ago.
Rutenberg is currently the chief political correspondent for the newspaper’s Sunday magazine, having joined the NYT from the New York Observer as a media correspondent in 2000.
A joint memo to staff from executive editor Dean Bacquet and business editor Dean Murphy said the hunt for someone to take on the prestigious role had been “exhaustive” and taken in both internal and external candidates.
“Jim brings to the job a passion for the story, a track record in covering the industry and the experienced eye of an astute observer,” they wrote.
Rutenberg, who has also been an investigative reporter and White House correspondent at the newspaper said: “It’s an honour and beyond daunting to be granted the space that David filled in such a special way, which touched so many people.
“There can never be another David Carr, so I can only hope to do his legacy, and the paper, proud.”
Carr, who was widely seen as one of the most incisive and entertaining media commentators in the English language, died suddenly last February after collapsing in the Times’s offices.
As well as being the NYT’s foremost voice on media issues, he became figurehead for the paper as the leading figure in the 2011 documentary about the newspaper, Page One, and wrote about his time as a drug addict in memoir The Night of the Gun.
