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The dizzying speed with which Jack Griffin was dumped from Time Inc. after only five months on the job seems to have turned editorial head John Huey from a lame duck into a formidable force within the publishing powerhouse once again.
Huey, who was always seen as a shrewd operator, was believed to be nearing the end of his run after Griffin came to power and installed Martha Nelson in the No. 2 editorial job, putting her in line to take over from Huey as editor-in-chief.
But as the shake-up in the corner office continued to reverberate through the company yesterday, Huey appeared to be asserting his authority. In one telling sign, his name moved to the top of Time Inc.’s corporate Web site as if he had been installed in the No. 1 job after Griffin’s ouster.
For four days, he was listed above a half-dozen executives even though he is part of a triumvirate that also includes General Counsel Maurice Edelson and Chief Financial Officer Howard Averill that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes appointed as the interim management committee to run the company.
“Someone just took Jack’s name off the Web site and didn’t move the others up,” said a Time Warner spokesman. “There was no intent in it. It was a mistake.”
Foes complained Griffin had a gruff style that was alienating key executives, including Huey. By the time Griffin had returned from a trip to London to meet with executives, Bewkes had grown concerned enough that he had begun sounding out several board members about the possibility of asking Griffin to resign.
Events appear to have been accelerated by the middle of last week.
On Wednesday morning, Edelson confronted Griffin, demanding to know why he, Averill and Huey were excluded from an executive summit that Griffin was planning for early March.
The blowup was apparently the last straw. Bewkes informed the board on Thursday that he would ask for Griffin’s resignation later that afternoon.
Still, Griffin attended a meeting of Next Issue Media, a consortium of media companies working on shared digital problems. According to one source, he showed zero signs that he was a dead man walking.
That same day, Griffin cancelled a meeting with Randall Rothenberg, the chief digital officer hired away from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and instead headed to a late afternoon meeting with Bewkes — still unaware that his fate was sealed.
A stunned Griffin was believed to have asked for 24 hours to consider the offer to resign, but Bewkes demanded an immediate answer. When one was not forthcoming, Bewkes sent a now-infamous memo, saying Griffin clashed with the culture of Time Inc. and Time Warner.
There is still no resolution on who will be Griffin’s replacement. Despite Huey’s brief ascent up the Time Inc. masthead, he is not considered a candidate.
“Once a successor is named, one would assume [Huey] will return to his previous position, and to suggest anything else would be pure speculation,” said a Time Warner spokesman. kkelly@nypost.com