The fine art of being sorry: it's never wrong to admit you were wrong.

It's no fun being sorry, but it is necessary.

That's one conclusion I've reached as I approach my second year as an editorial page editor.

In that period, I've apologized twice in print to readers. I'm not sure if this puts me on a trend toward being one sorry editorial page editor or an editorial page editor who knows when to be sorry. I'll let others judge.

I apologized the first time because we published a piece by a former Milwaukee mayor that the former mayor then said he didn't write. The second time, I apologized in a column for the board because we used "facts" we now know to be false to arrive at an editorial stance.

The first one was absolutely necessary arising as it did because we didn't follow our own rules regarding confirmation, and this resulted in attributing authorship Falsely. We were bamboozled but shouldn't have been.

The second involved what we had written about the now-infamous--and still nonexistent--Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This apology was, in my mind, optional strictly as a matter of accuracy but a logical extension of efforts at transparency.

Let me explain. We were wrong on WMD--the jury's still out on whether a bamboozling was afoot--but so were many others. In other words, it wasn't entirely unreasonable that we would believe they existed at one time, though neither was it unreasonable to have questioned the assertions.

Explaining how we got there--and to our present position on Iraq--was more important than apologizing. But as long as I was going about the one--explaining why we were wrong--it followed that we as a board should not be cavalier about being so. If the apology wasn't absolutely required, it certainly wasn't inappropriate.

What can I say? My mother was big on manners.

But this apologizing can be a tricky thing. Done too much and your credibility takes a hit. This isn't something many newspapers can afford these days.

Done not enough or not done when appropriate, we become the arrogant, uncaring institution our detractors accuse us of being.

The solution, I think, is to be unafraid of apologizing and knowing when to. To pervert Erich Segal's work: Loving our readers is having to say you're sorry.

Yes, being sorry is necessary. So, when is it, absolutely?

Well, not when you've written that the project costs $27 million but it really costs $270 million, or when that "m" in million mistakenly becomes a "b." We regret the error, of course--and feel pretty stupid for letting it get through--but all that is implied in the correction we run as soon as possible. The mea culpa can be half-full and still suffice. A "we regret the error" in these cases strikes me as unnecessary and, in repetition with each correction, is apt to smack of insincerity in a we-feel-your-pain sort of way

No, save the apologies for when it matters. You know, when you've just attributed a piece to a guy who says he didn't write it.

But apology is not enough. We owe it to our readers to explain how the error happened. We really owe them transparency.

In our case, we got the piece from a former staffer whom the former mayor--now quite elderly--had used as a conduit to get articles to us before. The former staffer said it came from the mayor. We didn't go directly to the source. Our error.

We explained all that to readers, not as in blaming the former staffer, but telling them that it was our fault for not checking directly with the alleged source.

Embarrassing, certainly but apologizing--and explaining--was absolutely necessary

I noticed that, after many newspapers got the Sago Mine deaths wrong, some published editor's notes in explanation on the next day that regretted the error and others full columns that did same. And, I'm guessing, others did nothing at all but maybe ran stories that explained why many news operations got it wrong.

Me, I'd rather err on the side of graciousness. That's because the operative word is still "wrong."

So, those are my rules. Don't apologize for the mundane mistakes. Use them sparingly only for the biggies, but be unafraid. No need to feel apologetic for a sincere and necessary apology And while you're apologizing, explain how you got there.

(One more rule: Don't apologize if you're right no matter who's pressuring you.)

And, if this article doesn't much help you?

I'm sorry.

Ricardo Pimentel is editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. E-mail rpimentel@ journalsentinel.com