Washington-bound. The Globe announced today that deputy managing editor Peter Canellos, who's run the paper's local coverage for the past four years, will replace David Shribman (the new executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) as Washington bureau chief.

Assessing the paper's local coverage is like trying to get your hands around a big, greasy eel. It's the heart of the paper, yet it also seems to be the hardest for an editor to make his or her mark. Canellos was an improvement over his predecessor, Teresa Hanafin, and he brought in some excellent young talent. He deserves credit for the creation of the Sunday Ideas section. And he successfully made the transition from the Matt Storin era to the Marty Baron regime.

Still, he'll probably look back on his time as metro editor the way some of his predecessors do: as an ordeal that he survived.