All newspapers are like this in the UK.
I know that the left-leaning "independant" has been cited here as a paper
that uses metric a lot but even they (in the physical paper itself) tend to
opt for imperial.
Having said that it is not "strictly enforced". For example a newspaper
called "The Daily Mail" (authorative conservative) uses cm of snow in their
coverage of the best slopes in Europe.
From: "Carleton MacDonald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:35683] RE: Canadian usage of SI in a B.C. newspaper
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:41:18 -0500
The London Daily Telegraph, a conservative paper, is holding down the rear
guard - articles are in imperial only unless metric was quoted. At least
it
is like this on their web site (www.telegraph.co.uk).
Carleton
_____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Ezra Steinberg
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 16:14
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:35677] Canadian usage of SI in a B.C. newspaper
I must say I was very pleasantly surprised today to discover that a
newspaper in British Columbia appears to use SI whenever it can.
I found the page of the paper posted in someone's cubicle here a work
(Portland, Oregon area). Since the entire newspaper wasn't available and
the
name of the paper isn't printed on the page, I can only say the article
came
out in October of 2005. The section name is "Regional", the topics on both
sides of the page pertain to British Columbia, and the size of the page is
small tabloid. That size makes me wonder if it is not a regional newspaper,
and maybe even a weekly.
In any case, the article was instructive because it talked about how a man
survived a grizzly bear attack. The entire article used SI -- kilograms for
the mass of the bear and meters for distances. (They know the mass of the
bear because rangers found the bear and shot it.) The one place where they
used feet was in the quote from the victim about how far he was from the
bear before it attacked. Since it was a direct quotation, and since he is a
man in his seventies who obviously spent most of his life using Imperial
units, I was not surprised or dismayed.
I found an interesting contrast on the back side of the page which was part
of the sports section. The articles talked about Canadian Football League
games, so I was not surprised to see distances for rushing and passing
given
in yards only. That's inevitable given the context.
If this paper really is a regional one in west coast B.C., it encourages me
quite a bit when it comes to the future of SI usage in Canada. (I would
have
assumed that big city dailies were more likely to use SI and smaller
regional dailies or weeklies in rural areas to be more conservative and
resistant.) It also makes me wonder if Canadian printed press in general
(which is privately controlled media, unlike official government organs
like
the CBC where I absolutely expect and get pure SI usage) uses SI more
consistently than, say, the UK printed press. (It seems that some
newspapers
there consistently use SI, while others seem to favor Imperial almost
exclusively.)
Ezra
