NYT biz editor will be acting ME for June and July

Larry Ingrassia, the business editor of the New York Times, will become acting managing editor for news at the paper during June and July.

The current ME for news, Jill Abramson, is taking a six-month leave from the position to run the paper’s Web site news operations. Deputy business editors Winnie O’Kelley and Dean Murphy will likely operate the business news department during Ingrassia’s temporary departure.

In a memo, executive editor Bill Keller wrote, “No doubt this rotation will be widely analyzed, interpreted and speculated about. (I look forward to hearing and reading a lot of entertaining nonsense.) The real purpose is threefold: 1) to give us a chance to see some of our best editors applying their talents to the entire news report, in print and online, rather than to specific departments; 2) to give these editors a break, a digression, a cobweb-clearing, an adventure; and 3) to allow deputies in their departments to show what they can do with a couple months of greater authority and autonomy.

“At the end of these sojourns, we expect the substitutes to return to their department a little smarter and a little refreshed. Jill will return to the ME job ready to guide the final lap of newsroom integration.”

See the memo here, posted on Romenesko.