David Carr on Glenn Greenwald

The visit to Mr. Greenwald’s jungle redoubt about 15 minutes from the beaches of Rio last week was notable for its contradictions. He is among the most wired journalists on earth, but he lives and works in Brazil, a country with a notoriously flaky Internet infrastructure.

He may have launched the lightning bolt of the Edward Snowden revelations from this house, but when it rains — which is often — the power fails.

On television and in print, he comes across as the ultimate alpha, ferocious and unbending, but here the dogs refuse to obey him, looking for guidance from his husband, David, instead. The guy who issues face-melting rebukes on cable and Twitter is also the softy who keeps a pack of hot dogs in his car’s glove box to throw to the dogs wandering the favelas.

Mr. Greenwald, 47, is a lawyer turned journalist — first blogging on his own, then for Salon, then The Guardian — turned Pulitzer Prize winner and author of multiple books.

He is now in the midst of building First Look Media, a digital news site funded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.

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