Report card on the first day of our new production-distribution arrangement (as detailed in Sunday's column and blog):

Production: Excellent. Reporters and editors made deadline. Pages were electronically shipped ahead of schedule to Troy, where the press ran on time and the mailroom packaged the newspapers in good shape.

Distribution: Not as good. A variety of difficulties, some predictable for this kind of project, created a fair amount of late and/or missed deliveries. All involved are in communication today with expectations of a much better performance Wednesday. We (and you) demand nothing less.