Editor's Note: Why the corrections run on Thursdays

Every few months a reader calls the office to ask why the Beat holds its corrections until Thursday. The short answer is that Thursday is when we have room. The longer answer is that a correction deserves the same care as the story it fixes, and care takes most of a week.

A newspaper is a promise that someone checked. When we get a thing wrong, the promise is broken in a specific, findable place, and the least we can do is go back to that place, say so plainly, and set it right in print.

What a correction is not

It is not an apology tour, and it is not an excuse. It is the right name, the right date, and the right number, in the order they should have appeared the first time.

This week's corrections

A story on Monday's Pell Harbor council meeting misstated the length of the new pier. The pier is 340 feet long, not 3,400 feet. The Beat regrets the error and any boats that set out expecting the longer pier.

A caption on Tuesday identified the dog in the Smelt Days photograph as Biscuit. The dog is Gravy. Biscuit was not at Smelt Days.

The county drain commissioner's name is spelled Wojcicki. We have now spelled it three ways in three weeks. This is the correct one.

The Great Lake was described on Wednesday as "calm." It was not calm. Several readers wrote in.