Commissions of omission

Journalists only write 10 percent of what they know, said my college reporting instructor. Now it must be only 5 percent.

A reporter called me and we must have talked 20 minutes. In his story, I was represented by a one-sentence quote. What surprised me was the sentence he quoted, which displayed neither a central point nor any particular wit.

No wonder politicians place such a premium at staying "on message." Certainly I was getting through to the reporter, but I couldn't predict just what would get through to print.

Alan K.O. Tan spent considerable time in his Journalism 204 lecture at Wisconsin suggesting what reporters can get wrong in an interview, but less on how much to leave out. Since then I am constantly humbled by learning how much of what I say is lost because I'm still warming to a topic when the listener has already moved on.

Tan also introduced his students to the regional synonyms for political patron when he told us reporters should not use the word "Chinaman." But that's another story.

Outsourced context

It's a marvel how the New York Times can produce historical perspective through automation. Click on a word and Answers.com searches a reference library. Sometimes I just stumble on this feature through errant keystroke and learn that the tuna is a fast swimmer.

This ready-reference search came in handy when the Times reprinted a 15-year-old essay by novelist and now Nobel laureate Doris Lessing. She had made a point about political correctness that Harold ("Closing of the American Mind") Bloom now might appreciate, even as he grouses that in Lessing's case the Nobel committee could be its standard bearer. ( Bloom says since age 73 it's been all downhill for Lessing.)

Lessing saw Marxist roots in fuzzy political and academic speech, and took pains to separate it from literary speech: "Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution."

That's a sentence fraught with context, and while Answers.com did a fair job at a capsule bio of Andrei Zhdanov, Wikipedia gets right to the point on his role as impresario of Socialist Realism. As for the veiled reference to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, nytimes.com cannot read between the lines.

White Sox cheer now a September song

Chicago White Sox pitcher Jon Garland

Late September brings the merger of nature and man — the evening breeze under the street lamp — in its most focused form, the major-league ballpark. It's a bittersweet merger for Chicago White Sox fans.

Fall came too quickly this year, the ballpark lighting up before the first pitch. We covered our team jerseys with nondescript windbreakers and ordered hot coffee instead of cold beer. No wonder the singing Miller man from first base had replaced the gravel-voiced beer dude that had made third base his territory.

Jon Garland pitched a three-hitter, a reminder of another cold evening when Mark Buehrle pitched a no-hitter. New seatmates were there to follow the pitcher's cat-and-mouse games, some only for an inning as they left for vacant seats nearer home plate. Sometimes I was left with my own thoughts.

This weekend my fellow season ticket holders came for the last game under the lights before our wait till next year. Cubs fans now will have their day under the lights. We know how fleeting it can be.

A penguin's tale

It seemed like love at first sight, but was it really? Antarctica can be pitch-black for months at a time.

His crisp prom-tuxedo look could not have been what attracted her. The lady-bird pretty much dressed the same way. All penguins do.

It could have been prom king's cute Andy Rooney eyebrows. Or maybe it was his lapel. He matched the feather behind his ear with a bright-orange crustacean.

There is something romantic about Emperor penguins. When they're featured on television shows, my wife starts cooing. "They mate for life," she says. She looks me in the eye when she says this. Maybe this is why I thought of penguins to tell a story with a moral.

Or perhaps everyone seems to be drawing lessons from penguins. The movies find them inspiring -- who knew they could tap-dance! And the Chicago Tribune's lobby display uses penguins' response to climate change as symbol of transformative workplace change.

A newspaper cohort called me breathless awhile back. "There are penguins in the Baltimore Sun's lobby!" she said. It sounded like a bit far to range in a flight from global warming. But managers of the Tribune sibling were just relating a common business fable on seeing adversity as opportunity. And what captain of industry wouldn't want to face change by striking out in a bold new direction? If he could only chart a course.

Our prom-king penguin was a goal setter. He wanted to escape the stifling quiet, where he could hear the permafrost crunch under his well-insulated feet. And it was time to make a break from his parents. At this time of year penguins would be flocking to the colony, and these love-birds couldn't imagine living at home till they were 6!

So they struck out for a new, independent life. But by the time King got to that young-adult hangout, the historic Rookery, it was dawning on him (and dawning can take quite a while in Antarctica) that starting a family was more than just hatching an egg.

For one, the open sea was another 50 miles away, and with a hatchling on the way the love-birds couldn't just order takeout squid every night. One of them had to go on the hunt, and if lady-bird was to raise her chick she needed to make the deep dive now. That left the prom king to babysit her egg for two months, while fending off wild winds.

So King huddled with his buddies, not to talk about hunting but as an avian windbreak. They'd take turns standing in the center of the huddle for warmth. This is where baby fat comes in handy: They were balancing eggs on their feet to heat them, and no one was going to be going out any time soon for a cold one.

One of them in fact was woozy and did not look like he would last the winter -- could it have been the bird flu? -- and this cold made it no time to be unsteady on one's feet. When his buddy swooned, King scooped up the egg and kept it warm as one of his own offspring.

By the time lady-bird returned with a bellyful of food, she would have two young mouths to feed, and King would have the sure knowledge that life was not about striking out on your own as he had thought, but relying on and being reliable for others. It's a lesson those who flock to the city often fail to recognize, but these are the cold facts.

Photo: Cornelius Ventures on Unsplash

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