attlen weirdness?

I am using the following info to migrate a table from 6.2.1 to 6.3

\connect template1 
drop database magecal;
create database magecal;
\connect magecal 
\connect - julie
CREATE TABLE dates (id int4, date char(10), news char(1024)) archive = none;
COPY dates FROM stdin;
1	1998Jan16	<H3>Calendar Created</H3>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          !
                                             
\.
CREATE  INDEX dates_indx on dates using btree ( id int4_ops, date bpchar_ops );


now if I connect to the database and do

select attlen from pg_attribute where attname='news';

I get
-1

This doesn't seem quite right.

Julie

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