URBANA – Bleak financial conditions at the University of Illinois could be partly to blame for calling off a job search for the dean in the media college.

"I do not believe it is appropriate to appoint a new dean for the College of Media at this time," Richard Wheeler, interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, wrote in an e-mail to faculty Monday.

That left another interim, Dean Walt Harrington, indefinitely in charge of the college, which has been without a dean since former Dean Ronald E. Yates returned to full-time faculty status last summer.

Harrington, an award-winning reporter at the Washington Post, came the UI in 1996 and became interim dean in August.

He said "it wasn't (his) place" to comment on the university's finances.

"The college is going to move ahead with doing all the things we always do, our mission to educate students and do thoughtful work in journalism, advertising and media studies," he said. "We will be part of the larger conversation about any changes in the university that are required" because of state budget cutbacks.

Wheeler said he was suspending the search indefinitely, after four candidates made trips to the campus.

"Each of them had distinctive strengths," Wheeler wrote, and two candidates emerged as front-runners, but neither was a clear favorite, Wheeler said.

Wheeler said circumstances also changed.

"The university is facing the bleakest financial circumstances it has encountered in my four decades at Illinois. Over the next several months, the campus will be looking at the potential impacts of severe funding reductions on our academic mission. We will be examining the way our academic enterprise is structured and funded at every level from the chancellor's office out to the entire reach of the campus," he said in the e-mail.