By Anne Harpham

Readers expect their newspapers to be a window on the world, reporting major news events, uncovering wrongdoing and celebrating the good things in our community.

Readers also want to know about events that may not make headlines on the front page. More than a few people wondered why there were no details in Monday's paper about the partial solar eclipse that took place that afternoon.

We did have information on the eclipse in the May 26 Sky Watch column, but we should have reminded readers about the event last weekend or on Monday morning. Editors did discuss doing a story about the upcoming eclipse, but it fell through the cracks over the weekend.

A handful of readers also felt we didn't do justice to Kehaulani Christian, who was crowned the 2002 Miss Hawaii on June 7. We ran a brief item and photo last Saturday in the People column on Page A4.

We believe that competitions such as the Miss Hawaii pageant are news and we believe the item we ran was appropriate. While there was a time that most newspapers, including this one, devoted considerable space to coverage of pageants, times and interests have changed. There are many more such contests competing for attention now, and for those who are interested in more than the names of winners, most organizations have Web sites.

Coincidentally, we ran a story on Friday about a visit by Miss China to Honolulu as part of a U.S. tour sponsored by the Organization of Chinese Americans and a charity group, Self-Help for the Elderly. While we don't customarily cover visits by pageant winners, we thought this was different because Zhuo Ling was the first person to represent China in the Miss Universe pageant, and we wanted to talk to her about what that meant for her country. She was second runner-up.

Every so often, a reader will wonder why we specify responsibility in our published corrections. We don't name the individual involved but we do say whether a mistake was made by a reporter, editor, photographer, artist or page designer.

This week, a reader asked why we were holding our staff members up to ridicule.

We are not alone among newspapers in saying who made an error. But many papers simply state the correction without attribution. We have had our current policy for more than five years, and staff opinion is definitely mixed on the subject. Reporters tend to be more supportive of the policy, if only because their names appear on stories and, when an editor makes a mistake, the correction makes it clear that the error didn't come from the reporter.

We try to be forthright about our mistakes, large or small. In doing so, we are not trying to hold our staff up to ridicule or embarrass them publicly. We recognize that most readers don't care who made the mistake. But we believe that part of the correction is to explain to readers where the error occurred in the process of putting the daily paper together. Is it essential to the correction? No, of course not. But, as advocates of full disclosure, it is one part of explaining how an error occurred.

A couple of sharp-eyed readers were puzzled by a date in our A1 feature on lighthouses Tuesday. They recalled a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the Diamond Head lighthouse a few years ago. But we said the lighthouse was first lighted in 1918. A call to the Coast Guard revealed that we were right and the readers were right. The first lighthouse on the site fell over, and the present lighthouse, which replaced it, was first lighted in 1918.

Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com or phone 525-8033.