If you haven’t been reading The Post’s series on life along the proposed route of the Keystone XL oil pipeline by energy reporter Steve Mufson, I urge you to read it. It’s a compelling portrait of the boom in fossil fuels pulled from the ground from Canada south through North Dakota that is reducing this country’s reliance on oil imported from outside North America.

One part of that series, published online on July 18 and in the paper on July 19, was about the drilling and its economic, lifestyle and environmental effects on western North Dakota. That area sits atop the Bakken formation, an underground reservoir of oil embedded in rock that extends as far as eastern Montana, western North and South Dakota, and southern Saskatchewan province in Canada.

The story nicely blended the economic and industry benefits against the effects on the quality of life in that boom state.

But one of the players in the story, the railroads that help transport the oil southward, eastward and westward — because the pipelines aren’t yet big enough to carry all that new oil and gas to refiners in the United States — called to complain about a couple of paragraphs in the story that, well, made them look bad.

Readers reacted strongly to the four photos (some described them as Andy Warhol-esque) of James Holmes, the suspect in the Colorado movie theater massacre, which appeared on the front page of The Post on July 24.

(POOL - REUTERS) Most readers were upset that The Post was giving Holmes the attention he might crave; psychologists, readers pointed out, say that a common characteristic among those who carry out such acts is a desire for immortality and recognition.

Family members of shooting victims also had urged the media to not play up photographs of the alleged shooter or publicize his name.

“I feel that one photograph of the accused Aurora killer would have been plenty, thank you very much,” wrote one reader. “A Warholian montage of four is totally unnecessary. Remember that this person committed his crimes to garner attention and fame. Let us deny it to him.”

The bus bombing in Bulgaria on July 18 that killed six Israelis, plus the bus driver and the suicide bomber, quickly became one of the top international stories of the week, and many readers were upset when the paper arrived at their doorsteps on Thursday morning without any front-page coverage of the terrorist attack.

Some were even more incensed by the placement of the story that did appear in the paper at the bottom of A18, the last page of the A section.

One reader said: “I personally have never been one to criticize the Washington Post for being unfair or biased. But this is a shock to my sensibilities. I am deeply upset and offended by this.”

Another questioned The Post’s priorities: “Post editors attached more importance to a poll about the mayor of Washington, D.C., the oil boom in North Dakota, Sen. McCain’s defense of a Clinton aide tied by some Republicans to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Britain’s obesity problems on the eve of the Olympics.  Each of these stories appeared on the front page and thus topped in significance the murder of six Israelis in Bulgaria.”

Here’s a little storm clean-up from my e-mail.

A lot of readers wrote in agreement with my July 8 column taking The Post to task for inadequate coverage of the destructive derecho storm, and many of them had specific suggestions on stories that reporters can pursue now, in the wake of the damage, or to keep in mind for future storms that cause massive power outages.

And they also wrote to praise two parts of The Post that I neglected to mention in my column.

First the praise:

A number of readers wrote to praise The Post’s circulation team for getting their morning papers to them despite the downed trees and power lines and blocked roads.

 Bob Hurt of the District wrote this: “I was stunned to emerge from my powerless house on Saturday morning, and there, in the pre-dawn darkness, was my usual two copies of the Post. As my Northwest D.C. neighborhood looked as if it had been hit by an air strike, I have no idea how this dedicated soul navigated the debris and closed streets.”

Was a Washington Post poll published last week that asked Americans how they felt about major environmental problems biased in a global-warming direction?

A sharp-eyed reader raised that question after pointing out that Jon Krosnick, the Stanford University professor who has helped The Post conduct its polling on environmental issues, sat on the board of a group called Climate Central.

Climate Central began in 2008 as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that brought together news professionals and scientists whose main goal was to disseminate straightforward climate data and studies to the public.

But in recent months, the group got new leadership and changed into more of an advocacy group, aiming to get people to do more about what the group now sees as “a clear and present danger” — global climate change. As its rewritten Web site now says, its mission is not just to inform people but also to “inspire Americans to support action to stabilize the climate, prepare for a hotter world, or some combination of the two.”