Newspaper publishers in the United States have long been enthusiastic users and distributo

Newspaper publishers in the United States have long been enthusiastic users and

distributors of weather maps. Although some newspapers that had carried the United States

Weather Bureau's national weather map in 1912 dropped it once the novelty had passed,

many continued to print the daily weather chart provided by

(5) their local forecasting office. In the 1930's, when interest in aviation and progress in

air-mass analysis made weather patterns more newsworthy, additional newspapers

started or resumed the daily weather map. In 1935, The Associated Press (AP) news

service inaugurated its WirePhoto network and offered subscribing newspapers

morning and afternoon weather maps redrafted by the AP's Washington, B.C, office

(10)from charts provided by the government agency. Another news service, United Press

International (UPI), developed a competing photowire network and also provided

timely weather maps for both morning and afternoon newspapers. After the United

States government launched a series of weather satellites in 1966, both the AP and

UPI offered cloud-cover photos obtained from the Weather Bureau.

(15) In the late 1970's and early 1980's, the weather map became an essential

ingredient in the redesign of the American newspaper. News publishers, threatened

by increased competition from television for readers' attention, sought to package

the news more conveniently and attractively. In 1982, many publishers felt

threatened by the new USA Today, a national daily newspaper that used a page-wide,

(20)full-color weather map as its key design element. That the weather map in USA

21 Today did not include information about weather fronts and pressures attests to the

largely symbolic role it played. Nonetheless, competing local and metropolitan

newspapers responded in a variety of ways. Most substituted full-color temperature

maps for the standard weather maps, while others dropped the comparatively drab

(25)satellite photos or added regional forecast maps with pictorial symbols to indicate

rainy, snowy, cloudy, or clear conditions. A few newspapers, notably The New York

Times, adopted a highly informative yet less visually prominent weather map that

was specially designed to explain an important recent or imminent weather event.

Ironically, a newspaper's richest, most instructive weather maps often are

(30) comparatively small and inconspicuous.

What does the passage mainly discuss？

A．The differences between government and newspaper weather forecasting in the United States.

B．The history of publishing weather maps in United States newspapers

C．A comparison of regional and national weather reporting in the United States.

D．Information that forms the basis for weather forecasting in the United States