Business

Controversial Times sports editor bumped upstairs

New York Times Sports Editor Tom Jolly will see his controversial eight-year reign come to an end next month when he moves upstairs to a new job.

His tenure was marked by the Times’ widely criticized coverage of the notorious 2006 Duke University lacrosse case in which a stripper accused three players of raping her — charges that were eventually proven false.

Jolly has since said he regretted the way the Times handled the Duke story at the time.

He also supervised the disappearance of many of the Gray Lady’s most renowned sports columnists and the elimination of many of its beat reporters on local sports teams.

While Executive Editor Bill Keller sought to portray the new job of night news editor as a promotion, some insiders said it is a lateral move at best into a new job that is still not widely understood as the publisher merges its print and digital news operations.

Many on the sports desk, however, may be inclined to say good riddance.

Of the paper’s coverage of the Duke case, Jolly was quoted long after the fact as saying he regretted it, while the story eventually moved out of sports to the national desk.

According to one published report, he said: “As far as our coverage of the case itself, if the essence of your question is whether I feel good about it, the answer is that I very much regret my failure to recognize that we were dealing with a rogue prosecutor and that the university had compounded his bravado by overreacting to the initial reports about the case.”

Jolly also oversaw sweeping changes in the bylines that appeared in the circulation-challenged paper.

Last year, he bounced Sports of the Times columnist Harvey Araton to general feature writer job.

A Times spokesman said that Araton has since returned to writing sports columns along with other columns.

He added that the paper has consistently pulled in top sports awards, including winning 5 of the 11 APSE awards handed out for 2009 reporting.

Veteran columnist Dave Anderson was forced into semi-retirement in 2007, reduced to only penning 18 stories a year. Columnist Ira Berkow, who earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for “The Minority Quarterback,” also retired in 2007 after 26 years.

Selena Roberts, who broke the Alex Rodriguez steroid story with Sports Illustrated after serving as a Times columnist from 2002 to 2007, said, “There’s probably a very mixed reaction to [Jolly] among the staff.”

Jolly was appointed by then Executive Editor Howell Raines and survived with the wrenching cutbacks that Keller, Raines’ successor, had to introduce.

In the process, the sports section, which once stood as a stand-alone section with its own front page, now rides in the back of the business section five days a week.

He will become night news editor in January, the p.m. complement to Ian Fisher, the deputy foreign editor who is going to be the day news editor as the paper works through the melding of its print and digital news desks. Both are newly created positions.

“I’m very proud of the section and the way we’ve transitioned it into a national section,” said Jolly.

No replacement has yet been named.

Party ‘Time’

Today Ann Moore gets her farewell party, tossed once again inside the Time & Life building by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and Jack Griffin, her replacement as Time Inc. CEO.

Moore relinquished the CEO title in September and formally ends her ties to the company when she hands over the Time Inc. chairman’s title to Griffin in January.

Griffin has unleashed a dizzying round of executive changes in recent weeks, culminating with the selection this week of Randall Rothenberg as Time Inc.’s chief digital officer, the first such title in the company.

Meanwhile, there has been some back and forth inside the company over whether last week’s assignment of Stephanie George as a chief marketing officer was really a promotion.

She keeps the executive vice president stripes she earned under Moore, but loses control of the corporate sales operations that generate a sizeable portion of the division’s multi-billion dollar haul of ad revenue.

By comparison, marketing services, which she now oversees, generates only $100 million a year.

Insiders see it both ways. One insider opined that it would be no surprise if George quit in the near term.

Another source close to George in sisted she has nothing but upside since future acquisitions on the mar keting services front may land under her. But it remains to be seen if she will become a top lieutenant to Griffin. George herself declined to comment on the rumblings that she will quit. kkelly@nypost.com