The New York Times' Metro report will write more about food and sex than ever and it will write less about New Jersey than it has in years. This news officially comes in response to a reader's inquiry to Metro editor Joe Sexton: "Do you cover Jersey anymore?" Sexton's response in today's nytimes.com Q &A: "Ouch. But Jersey? Love Jersey."

After explaining that the Times' stellar local reporter David Kocieniewski would stay on the Jersey beat—presumably when Mr. Sexton isn't busy assigning him to investigative pieces on Charlie Rangel's real-estate ownership—he lays out Metro's future "pledge" to Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester and Long Island now that the bureaus have been emptied out.  read more »

When The New York Times Metro section reorganized earlier this year—one staffer described it as "retrenchment"—and killed off the regional bureaus in favor of more city-centric beats, one senior newsroom source told The Observer that there was an idea for a sex beat for Metro.

In a Q&A on nytimes.com today, Joe Sexton (hold your jokes please!) seems to confirm that.

When answering a question about Metro's new mission, Mr. Sexton said: "Jim Dwyer, our gifted About New York columnist, likes to say there are three great, inextinguishable human needs: food, sex and stories. We're going to keep the stories coming, likely including many about food and sex (don't wince yet!)"

The New York Times' Eric Konigsberg was hired by the Metro section to write about the lifestyles of the rich. He wrote for magazines like The New Yorker and Rolling Stone before coming on board, and had never had a job at a newspaper. In any event, when he was hired in August 2006 he told Joe Sexton that he'd run to cover a Jersey City fire when duty called. "I told him to bring his track shoes," said Mr. Sexton in a memo announcing the hire back then.  read more »

At 2 p.m. on March 10, The New York Times published a story on its Web site reporting that Governor Eliot Spitzer had been named in connection with a federal investigation into a prostitution ring.

And the story belonged, unequivocally, to the Cinderella section of the Times newsroom, the Metro desk. Joe Sexton, editor of the section since 2006, was finally getting to try on the glass slipper: The Spitzer story was arguably the biggest scoop in a year at The Times, and was certainly the biggest story of Joe Sexton’s reign at Metro.  read more »

The New York Times has a new metro columnist. Susan Dominus, who has contributed to The Times Magazine, New York and Glamour, will start work this Monday and will write a twice-a-week column for Metro, joining columnists Clyde Haberman, Jim Dwyer and Peter Applebome.

In a memo, Metro editor Joe Sexton wrote:  read more »

Joe Sexton's full (and lengthy!) memo after the jump, which includes thanking Globe editor Marty Baron and mentioning Ms. Ryan's ping-pong prowess.

UPDATE: Adam Reilly at the The Phoenix now has Marty's memo.  read more »

Q. Last year, the Metro section published a one-week series of daily articles (on Sept. 29, Sept. 30, Oct. 1, Oct. 2, and Oct. 3, 2006) about a toilet-related controversy at a chess match in Elista, Russia, in the republic of Kalmykia.

Is Kalmykia considered part of the New York metropolitan area?

-- Max

A. Dear Max: I have always considered Kalmykia to be the city's sixth borough.

Congrats and, in case you didn't get the memo:

To: The Staff

From: [Metro Editor] Joe Sexton

Diane Cardwell's first byline in the paper a dozen years ago carried this headline: Rapwear. Soulwear. Hipwear. The story introduced a new and fresh voice to our pages, and it is a voice that over the years has shown itself to be wise as well as witty, authoritative as well as nuanced, tough as well as tender. She wrote, for instance, the obituaries of Onofrio Ottomanelli -- the famed Village butcher -- and Freddy Ferrer -- the Bronx pol who didn't quite, ahem, make the cut.

She profiled the assassin at City Hall and Mr. Bloomberg's more or less constant companion. She traveled the country and filed from the battleground states in 2004, then returned to Brooklyn and took up a different kind of turf fight at the Atlantic Yards.

Along the way, her coverage of the City Council earned her a reputation as a shrewd and sophisticated observer of one of the city's more curious institutions. It made you laugh and cry, which pretty much means she got it just right.

Starting next month, Diane will bring her voice -- and all the intelligence and instinct and rigor that informs it -- to her role as City Hall Bureau Chief. It's an appointment we make with enormous excitement and great satisfaction. Diane, who has a real feel for the landscape and its inhabitants, also has a host of bold ideas for chronicling the second term of the Bloomberg administration and taking a true measure of its arguable accomplishments and potentially lasting improvements. We are, too, quite confident she will serve as an artful manager of a very busy and very talented couple of accomplices in Room 9.

In short, Diane -- child of Harlem and lifelong lover of the city -- rocks. We can't wait to get the party started.