Mike James named sports editor

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Here’s the memo from Editor Russ Stanton:

Mike James, deputy sports editor for the past three years, is our news sports editor, effective today.

Mike has been instrumental in maintaining our award-winning Sports section in print while expanding its reach to the Web and beyond. He was an early convert to working in other media, having spent 2000 to 2002 as coordinating producer for Foxsports.com and then on the television side as executive editor of Fox Sports Net. Mike has drawn on those experiences in managing the ongoing transition of The Times’ Sports section to a multimedia operation.

He joined The Times in 1985, supervising daily sports coverage of the Orange County edition as an assistant sports editor. He moved downtown in 1989 as a news editor and later was promoted to assistant sports editor and then senior assistant sports editor. After leaving Fox, Mike returned to The Times as senior copy chief. He was named deputy sports editor in April 2006. He also has written extensively for The Times, primarily on golf.

Mike began his newspaper career as a sportswriter for the Burlington Free Press, where he worked from 1978 to 1981 before moving to the Hartford Courant, where he ran the sports desk. He has a BA in psychology, which has served him well in newspaper management.

Of course, no announcement involving Sports would be complete without a statistic, so here’s this: Mike is only the seventh editor of The Times’ Sports section since 1928.

Russ Stanton
Editor

[Updated at 4:28 p.m.: Reader David asked what happened to the previous sports editor. A post earlier this month noted that former Sports Editor Randy Harvey had assumed new duties.]