In recent years, The Times has increased its metropolitan staff, published new local sections and given added space to local news.

Reporters said no full-time employees were cut from the metropolitan staff.

While at The Times, he worked both as a reporter on the metropolitan staff and as an editor for the foreign desk.

Our metropolitan staff includes an immigration reporter, a religion reporter, and so on.

"The series we ran occupied about half of our metropolitan staff for weeks," Mr. Brown said.

Since 1992, he had been on the metropolitan staff, and often edited and wrote headlines for the main articles of the day.

He retired in 1985 as a reporter on the metropolitan staff.

He moved to The Times in April 1990 as an investigative reporter on the metropolitan staff.

Reporters on the metropolitan staff of The Times gave some examples.

Three years later, on the strength of some feature articles he wrote, he was promoted to the metropolitan staff as a reporter.