A number of readers were unhappy with The N&O's coverage of the tragic police chase in Franklin and Granville counties that left two sisters dead.

Rare is the week that I do not get a reader's complaint about The N&O's coverage of the war in Iraq. Where are the good news stories about troops rebuilding schools, restoring electricity, helping children?

Last month, John Drescher was appointed executive editor of The News & Observer, overseeing the paper's news coverage and staff of more than 200 journalists. Here are excerpts from my interview with him last week.

There was an unusual exhibition of journalism in last week's papers that stirred some readers, troubled others and puzzled a few.

I've heard a good bit recently from my friends toward the starboard tip of the political spectrum, alerting me to a new study of the media and the 2008 presidential campaign.

Some readers noticed something unusual in a story about a rape trial in Tuesday's paper. Not only was the victim named in the story, but her picture was displayed as the lead photo on the front page of the City & State section.

Is the sexual orientation of Jim Neal relevant to his candidacy for the U.S. Senate? Yes, says The News & Observer, which disclosed Neal's sexuality on the front page Tuesday, under the headline "Gay man's race for Senate is a rarity.

A teenager's letter to the editor caught my eye the other day. Nikolai Hesterberg of Cary said a front-page story on the drought "really stunned me.

The story was hard to find, tucked away in a corner inside the Sports section. But it was enough to rile some readers about The N&O's treatment of high school athletes.

Is The News & Observer biased? Lots of people think so. Rare is the day that I don't hear from a reader complaining that The N&O slants the news. "You are a company that's engaged in political content designed to influence what peop

Lucille Webb was in the stands at the end of the football game between N.C. Central University and N.C. A&T University when a fight broke out on the field.

'The newspaper is morphing into something entirely different." Yes. Hillsborough reader Gwen Harvey got it at the monthly meeting of The N&O's Community Panel last week, after hearing a presentation by editors about The N&O's growing presence on the Web.

The News & Observer was more offensive than usual last week. Reader reaction to two items in the paper, a news column and a cartoon, raised the question: Where do you draw the line?

Readers noticed The Observer in The News & Observer last week. John Dendy of Durham noticed a Charlotte Observer article in Monday's paper about Charlotte's ugly treatment 50 years ago of a girl who tried to integrate a high school.

Last week's dramatic story about the exoneration of a man wrongly imprisoned for 18 years on rape charges included an interview with the woman who had accused him, incorrectly, of the crime.

The tobacco industry doesn't do much newspaper advertising these days, so it was noticeable when ads for R.J. Reynolds products began appearing in The N&O recently.

"The day I was shot in Durham." Sounds like the title of a B-grade movie. But I'll admit, that headline pulled me into a Point of View article on Tuesday's op-ed page by Coleman Cowan, about his life-changing encounter with a gun-bearing youth in a Durham parking lot eight years ago.