The New York Times’s hyper-energetic reporter Sewell Chan fielded a question in a mediabistro.com Q&A about what it’s like working with Arthur Gregg Sulzberger on his City Room blog staff at nyt.com. Sulzberger is the son of Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and an heir apparent to the Times company.

Regardless of Sulzberger’s talent at City Room or in his previous reporting gig at The Oregonian, I’m not sure Chan had many options on how to answer the question. Here’s what he said:

Arthur Gregg Sulzberger joined the Times staff as a reporter, and he’s been working continuous news. He’s already been working with metro, and he’ll continue to work with metro. He has been absolutely impressive, gracious, smart as a whip, hardworking, full of energy, full of ideas, and has a great sense of language. His writing sparkles, and he’s a charm and a pleasure to work with.

It’s an especially good answer when Times salaries are about to get cut by 5 percent this year — part of cost-cuts to keep the paper alive — and layoffs are not off the table, at least according to the tentative agreement between the TImes management and union that we reported on Tuesday.