Mr. Darnton, 54, joined The Times in 1966 as a metropolitan reporter.

Ms. Mitchell joined The Times in 1992 as a metropolitan reporter.

The next day, our town's burghers ran out to tell curious metropolitan reporters, 'Things like that don't happen here. '

Before joining the Journal, Mayer worked as a metropolitan reporter for the Washington Star.

After the war, he returned to the paper as a metropolitan reporter.

Mr. Oreskes, 39, joined The Times in 1981 as a metropolitan reporter covering politics.

"I was gratified to see it," Bettina Boxall, a metropolitan reporter, said of the message.

Since joining the paper in 1981, he has had numerous assignments, including metropolitan reporter, chief investigative reporter and chief of the paper's Albany bureau.

In 1983, she joined The New York Times, initially as a metropolitan reporter.

But only a handful of the metropolitan reporters, who are the heart of the paper, have crossed the line.