Scott Timberg, 50, a Los Angeles-based arts writer who worked at The Day in the 1990s, died Dec. 10 in L.A. His family said it was suicide.

An arts writer, he left The Day in 1997 to work as an editor for New Times L.A. and joined the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer in 2002. The Times "became an ideal perch to watch the ongoing circus of creative life in a city he always believed was misunderstood by the outside world, and to document it in joyous terms," the Los Angeles Review of Books said. He was laid off in 2008 and began freelancing for The New York Times, Vox, The Guardian, Los Angeles Magazine, Live Talks Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Review of Books. 

In 2005, Yale University Press published his "Culture Clash: The Killing of the Creative Class," which The New Yorker said was "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life." He was co-writing a book with guitarist Richard Thompson titled "Beeswing: Britain, Folk Rock and the End of the 60s."

“Scott arrived in New London, fresh out of graduate school, as if he’d been shot out of a cannon," said Milton Moore, the former arts editor at The Day. "He was so full of energy and enthusiasm and commitment that he energized the people around him, myself included."

“This high-speed projectile landed at the Los Angeles Times as chief culture writer within a decade. To most people, his brilliant intellect and fine writing made him stand out," Moore added. "But to anyone who knew him, his most singular attribute was that he loved people — organizing them, orchestrating them, getting them together. ... He would use people like encyclopedias. You’d get a phone call from him asking for some fact from a conversation you’d had six years before. He was that rarest of people — both a true intellectual and a people person.”

He was born Feb, 15, 1969, in Palo Alto, Calif., the son of Jane and Robert Timberg. He was mostly raised in Maryland. Timberg majored in English at Wesleyan University and earned his Master of Arts degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He leaves his wife, Sara, and son, Ian; siblings Amanda Timberg in London, Sam Timberg in New York and Craig Timberg in Washington, D.C.; and his mother, Jane Timberg, in Maryland. A memorial service was held Tuesday in Pasadena.

A GoFundMe site has been established to aid the family.