Seems as though not everyone on the Metro desk possesses the same alacrity of mind, and typing skills, as the recently departed Sewell Chan. (Departed for NYT blog-land, that is! Not departed-departed.) Anyway, things have gotten so bad that Metro Editor Joe Sexton was inspired to send out a memo to his underlings outlining his discontent. The subject was in all caps—DO NOT TRASH THIS—but the post itself? All lower-case! We have a friend who says that when a guy writes you in all lower-case letters, it means he's trying to get in your pants in a non-threatening way (crafty!), so we can only imagine what Joe Sexton was thinking when he sent this out.

folks,

i want this note to feel urgent. i considered using ALL CAPS to make the point. but i figured you would take me at my word.

we plainly have to do better at getting stories done earlier, and to the desk earlier. pete khoury made a calm and persuasive plea about this back at the metro lunches in late february. he is calm no longer. and i can hardly blame him. one of the benchmarks we had set — six stories to the desk by 5 p.m. — has been hit exactly three times in the last month.

look, i don't want to be a joyless scold/dork. but let me be clear: doing better is not an option; it is an obligation. part of our new job descriptions. doing better is essential to our future, and as such will be part of our annual reviews, backfielders included, me included.

i was moved to write not only because pete was in my face but because mike richard was in my sights. mike has spent this week helping us take the next step forward — bringing copy editors onto the desk in the morning, to start handling stories and to help with our multiple web efforts. his presence should excite us; mostly, given our performance, it has haunted us. mike deserves better; pete deserves better.

so, a coupla things. we will start formally marking stories on the daily budget that we want to the desk by 5. editors will be responsible for notifying reporters that they have one of those stories. and reporters will be responsible for delivering them, absent catastrophe.

second, this whole enterprise would be assisted by us all doing better at an even more basic benchmark: being at work, ready for duty, at our assigned time. like 10, and no later. of course, there are exceptions, too many to list. but, regrettably, there have also been too many instances of late where folks have not met this most fundamental obligation for no good reason. enough already.

i hope i have not lost friends in writing this note. but i do hope i have got your attention. and i hope it is not lost on you — and i am repeating myself here — that there's a pretty obvious good in this for you all. like getting home. to your families or beaches or ballparks or bartenders.

it should also be said that quite a fair number of you have worked your tails off to make things better and more efficient. clyde haberman, just by way of example, has embraced our offer to file his column early when he can, so we can post it on the web the day BEFORE it appears in the paper. he's been great. you all have that greatness in you.

joe