The retracted Rolling Stone article about an apparently fictional gang rape at the University of Virginia is a blemish on an otherwise illustrious career for the journalist who wrote it — which may explain why the magazine doesn’t plan to cut ties with her.

Freelance writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely has made a living out of long, provocative articles, but none as contentious as the piece in November that turned a national conversation about campus sexual assault into a much louder debate. Other journalists quickly found inconsistencies in the story titled “A Rape on Campus,” and on Sunday, Rolling Stone published a review it had asked the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism to undertake.

The report was scathing, saying it was a “story of journalistic failure that was avoidable.” That came after a finding last month by police in Charlottesville, Va., that there was no evidence to support the claims of the woman identified in the story only as “Jackie” that she had been raped by seven men at a fraternity house.

In a New York Times interview, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner described “Jackie” as “a really expert fabulist storyteller” who manipulated the magazine’s process.

The Columbia report did not support what some critics have speculated — that Erdely made it up.

Such criticism is rare for Erdely, 42, who went to work at Philadelphia Magazine when she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994 and has written for several other magazines, including Self and GQ, over the years.

Some of her most prominent stories have been about the seedy underbelly of prestigious worlds. She has written about a suburban mother addicted to heroin and another who ran a prostitution service.

She has twice been a finalist for National Magazine Awards for pieces on harassment of gay students at a Minnesota high school and sexual misconduct by a doctor.