Keep in mind that most newspapers blindly run stories directly from the Associated Press wire. You should try sending some letters to them and major national papers like USA Today and the New York Times to attract more attention to the issue on a level that AP folks will notice.
Johnathan McClure ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl Sorenson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 6:51 PM Subject: [USMA:23138] Letter to the editor > I got a letter published in the Deseret News, our state-wide paper. It has > a circulation of about 50,000, I think, which is much less than the Salt > Lake Tribune. I sent my letter by email to the Deseret News on Oct. 9 and > it was published on Sunday the 13th, but I missed it in the paper when it > was published. My boss mentioned it to me today and I went back and found > it in our newspaper pile. > > They removed the second to last sentence, and they replaced the first word > of the letter with "The". I used the subject "Don't dumb down the paper" > and they used the title "Stop changing measures". This is how I sent it: > > Friday's front page article, "Elevator into space a tall tale?", says the > elevator would be 62,000 miles high. This figure is obviously a conversion > from 100,000 kilometers. An article on page A3 in the same day's paper says > NASA is trying to find all asteroids "six-tenths of a mile or more in size." > This is obviously a conversion from 1000 meters or one kilometer. Another > article a few months ago mentioned that "more than two pounds" of cocaine > had been seized. How about one kilogram? > > Why are you changing simple, round measurements like these? NASA measures > in meters and kilometers, and cocaine is measured in kilograms. We will > still get the idea if you leave these kind of things in metric units. > Please stop trying to insulate us from the measurement units that the real > world uses. > > Carl >
