Folos

Today we expand our vocabulary of journalistic jargon with the word "folo," as in "a follow-up story." It can be a noun, or a verb, as in "Don't worry, our best reporter is foloing that story."

And here's an example:

The civilian worker whose photo of the flag-draped coffins of America's war dead was published Sunday by The Seattle Times has been fired.

So has her husband, who was also her co-worker. The two were employed by Maytag Aircraft, and were fired for "violating U.S. government and company regulations," the company president told The Seattle Times in its folo on the story.

The amateur photographer, Tami Silicio, received no payment for the snapshot that cost the couple their jobs.

Here's hoping the Seattle Times hires her.

Coincidentally, here's another example, this time a folo on an 18-year-old story.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu confirmed what most of the world already suspected: Israel had a nuclear weapons program. He had been a small part of it as a technician. But even as he was singing like a canary about those nuclear secrets to The Sunday Times in London, the Israeli secret service was laying a trap, using an agent known as Cindy to lure him away from the protection being provided by the Times. He went with her to Rome, where he was kidnapped and taken back to Israel, tried in secret and then kept in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR NEARLY 12 YEARS in a cell with the light on 24 hours a day. Finally his keepers became concerned about his mental health and let him out of isolation -- the reports on this story don't say if they ever turned the light out for him in those 18 years. Now he has been allowed to leave prison, but he's still not allowed to leave Israel.

In tomorrow's edition of the Australian newspaper The Age, American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg hails Vanunu as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era."
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