Amid the tulips and azaleas this weekend, our Home section blossomed into Home & Garden. The name change recognizes the section's attention to gardening, one of the biggest pastimes in our region. Home & Garden, which appears on Saturdays, also has added features on home life -- design, decorating, crafts and the like.

Over the past few days I've talked with dozens of readers about journalism and what they expect from this newspaper. A grisly photo from the ambush of four military contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, lit the fuse on this discussion.

Some people have asked why we need a group such as the N.C. Open Government Coalition, which I've helped to organize and which holds its first meeting Monday. A note I received the other day provides one answer.

I've been hearing a lot about Playboy magazine over the past week, more specifically, about The News & Observer's reporting on Playboy's plans to recruit locally for models. We published a brief story Monday inside the City&State section on the search for college women to model for an upcoming issue. Several readers complained that we were promoting pornography and the exploitation of women.