The Metric System in the Media

Vox.com’s logo

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by a science reporter from Vox.com. Frankly, I wasn’t familiar with this site but the reporter sent me a link to a New York Times article regarding its launch in April. Masterminding the enterprise is a former editor of the Washington Post. After I received the notice, I immediately went to check out the Vox.com site to see what kind of reporting I could expect. (Reporting styles can vary from balanced to hatchet jobs and I wanted to see what alley I might be turning into.) I was pleasantly surprised by the Vox.com site itself. A tagline is “Vox Explains: Everything you need to know, in two minutes.”And it turns out she was a former editor of Popular Science magazine. Impressive.

Our interview lasted about 10 minutes and we talked about how I began working on the documentary and various other issues, some of which apparently appeared in the piece. How can I not be sure? Well, she interviewed at least two other people and I have no idea what transpired during those conversations. Frankly, it was laudable that she worked to get at least three interviews. Some reporters don’t like to put that kind of time in when they’re under deadline, as she was.

I was very happy to see that the title of the piece was “It’s time for the US to use the metric system.” I could talk more about what’s in it but I’d recommend that you read it for yourself. While I wasn’t directly quoted, there was a link to this blog at the bottom of the story. I was even MORE happy to see that (as of this writing) there were more than 3,900 Facebook shares and more than 1,100 tweets of the story. The Vox pages don’t allow comments but the reporter’s contact information is on the page. I wrote her a follow-up email inquiring what kind of feedback she’d gotten and she said “Lots of passionate responses from readers from both sides of the aisle.” As of today, there were almost 260 click-throughs to this blog page. Not a huge amount but any publicity on this subject is fine by me.

Metric system undercurrents

I’ve said it before, but there seems to be an undercurrent of interest in the metric system that is on the rise. Not only did this article come out of nowhere (may ask her what prompted her to research this topic) but the number of articles is starting to pick up.

As brought to my attention by the Metric Maven, just recently the Journal of the American Association ran a story called “Group Urges Going Metric to head Off Dosing Mistakes.” A guest blogger and HUGE help to this project, Peter Goodyear wrote about this issue in March of last year.

I plan to write more about this medical turn of events in future but let me point out a few other mentions that have come up lately.

National Public Radio (NPR) “How did the meter get its length?” (June 26, 2014)

“Metric system switch is long overdue, as illustrated in Trexlertown” (June 26, 2014)

“Coming Soon: The Metric System, Global Cooling, And Soccer Domination” (June 14, 2014)

“At 44, metrification still a mess” (June 14, 201)

“Update: What If The Common Core Required The Metric System? In Alexander Russo’s This Week in Education” (June 6, 2014)

“UK Myth: The Metric System” (June 5, 2014) [Points out that the UK is not metric. When I asked the head of the UK Metric Association some time ago why not, he said “Because you don’t use it…]

“NFL Ditches Roman Numerals for Super Bowl 50, But Won’t Switch from Using Yards in Favor of Metric System” (June 4, 2014) [While the article doesn’t really talk about the metric system, just a mention in the headline is remarkable—this is the Slate!]

Also UK: “Give me a centimetre and I’m lost” (June 2, 2014)

Canada: “Metric mixup plays role in Lake Cowichan crash” (June 1, 2014)

Canada: “Parents can keep dignity under questioning” (May 30, 2014)

“It’s time for the US to use the metric system” (May 30)

“The Metric System, Traffic Circles, and Us” (No direct date but I got the notice on May 31)

The Vox.com story on something called “Real Clear Science.” May 30, 2014

The Vox.com story got picked up by Hacker News and someone expanded on the story’s content. (May 31, 2014)

The accompanying image

“Australia uses the metric system, so this is what I have to think of when someone uses feet and inches” (No date and some of the comments are 11 months old but I was just notified.)

It included this image [Has gotten more than 344 comments so far]

UK: “Great miscalculations: The French railway error and 10 others” (May 22, 2014) [Includes a number (ha) of measurement errors.]

Having working on this project for two years, (anniversary of its conception was June 15 BTW), that’s quite a bit of media coverage in a short period of time. If my predictions are correct, it’s going to pick up from here.

We’ll have to see where it leads us.

Linda

[Note: I’m moving to a new phase of this project and will likely post to this blog less often, however, if you wants short snippets of what’s going on behind the scenes, send me your email (to milebehind@gmail.com) as I’m now planning to employ a mailing list to keep people up to date. Do what works for you. I know I am since I have lots of other aspects to this work that need to move higher on my list to keep everything moving forward.]

How I’m Promoting My Metric System History Talk This Week (Or publicity 101)

You need a news hook

To get the media’s attention, first you need a “news hook” as in: “Why should I care about this now?” This is a concept some people have trouble grasping and I’ve had various conversations where people think the media will pick up things without a hook. As a totally made up example: “Oh, little Sally has gotten really good with her hula hoop. That would make a good news story.”

No, no it wouldn’t. Now, if little Sally just got an award for her hula hooping, or she was about to break a record for longest consecutive time swinging that circle around or the youngest person ever to try to break a record, then you’ve got a news hook.

You need a strong lead

The first paragraph or two is/are the lead of the story. The “who, what, when, where, why and how” (the five Ws) need to be there along with some, hopefully, compelling language or storytelling. It should contain the most important part of your story. Failure to do so is called “burying your lead.”

In particular, newspapers want stories told in an “inverted pyramid” style. Let’s say you sprinkle your Ws throughout the story and the editor needs a shorter piece–you could end up with some vital facts in the trash. By front loading all the important pieces of information and then elaborating on them in later paragraphs, editors can run the entire piece or just those first couple of paragraphs without having to rewrite the article, (some of them hate doing the extra work) and can trim it to what fits their needs.

Proximity also matters, with local outlets more likely to pick up a story than one further away, depending an a story’s importance, of course. A case in point, I had an interview with our local radio station on Monday (see below)  and I may have another one in Santa Fe on Tuesday. The LA Daily Post has run the story but I’m not sure if the Los Alamos Monitor will.

Will an Albuquerque outlet pick up the story? Less likely but you never know when a slow news day will hit (if there’s less to chose from on a particular day, they’ll run with things they’d normally pass over) so I sent it to them as well. You never know.

Advertising vs publicity

Advertising and publicity are two very different animals. Something might appear in the same outlet, say, a newspaper, so they might look like the same thing to those on the outside but there is a different dynamic at work on the inside.

Advertising is a contractual agreement with the media outlet where money changes hands and the advertiser has control over the content, how big or small that content is, how many times it’s run and (usually for additional money) where the ad is placed. (Full, back-page ads on magazines are more expensive than most internal full-page ads for reasons of visibility, for instance.)

Publicity, on the other hand, is completely voluntary on part of the media outlet, they can run or not, edit it down to the lead or run the whole thing–and sometimes more. It’s up to them. Publicity is “free” that is, I don’t pay to get my article printed, but I lose all control over it.

You can view the news release here: PR5_16_14Metric pdf.

I’ve got to continue refining my presentation for Wednesday, so I’m going to go work on that now.

Stay tuned.

You can hear my radio interview from Monday. It’s about 18 minutes long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 10,000 People I Expect to Meet (and a sidebar)

During the course of this project I expect to encounter (by one means or another) about 10,000 people. That might sound like a lot but I don’t really think it is. So far I’ve probably come in contact with at least 1,000 people and things haven’t really even started heating up yet…Or, let me put it another way, if I don’t encounter at least 10,000 people I really haven’t been doing my job. Let’s face it, it’s going to take a lot of word-of-mouth on this issue for people to gain awareness of our sad metric predicament and I’m hoping the 10,000 folks I come in contact with will help start a social ripple effect.

I have to say that so far it has been my pleasure to encounter these individuals. I’ve come in contact with some who are very supportive of the project and have offered to help me—and already have helped. (And hopefully you know who you are because I’ve said “Thank you.”) Sure, I’ve run into a couple of anti-metric types as well and that’s to be expected.

Allow me to share one of my recent positive encounters. Due to eventual publicity and other needs, I decided it was time to have a new photograph taken. The last one I have was so old that if I used it, it would have been akin to false advertising. I actually had a couple of different sets taken a few weeks ago, and one of these photos is now attached to this blog. At the recommendation of a friend, I also had a couple of head shots taken at a place called Pixel Images in Santa Fe, New Mexico, not far from where I live.

When I arrived, Anton, the photographer, greeted me, allowed me time to prepare myself and started taking the head shots—in reality passport photos. He also allowed me to see what he was doing so I could let him know if they met with my approval. They did. During the course of our session I told him about the project and he related to me that he is currently the only photographer in Santa Fe who can take photographs with metric dimensions as required for international passports. (Part of that whole “we’re in the minority” [5 percent] of the world who DON’T use the metric system. It so ridiculous.)

We also got into a discussion about Millicent, my metric snail logo. Anton decided that Millicent really needed a last name. By the end of our session (which didn’t take very long) he had come up with the idea of using “Gram” in one of various spellings (Graham, Gramm, and Gramms, etc.). Brilliant. While I haven’t decided definitively that Gram will be Millicent’s last name, it certainly is food for thought. (A quick search shows there are some other Millicent Grams out there, please don’t confused them with mine.)

So that’s just one example of someone who I might not have met had it not been for the project. I expect there will be many more fun and interesting encounters in my future and I’ll share the best ones with you. But, just be aware that as the project ramps up and I get busier, if you contact me and I don’t get back to you right away it may be because there are another 9,999 people who are trying to get my attention as well. I will, however, do my best to be responsive.

The promised sidebar

Many years ago I had a conversation with a photographer who was also a coworker. He complained to me that he would take people’s portraits and then they would complain that he had done a bad job. In fact, he had done a great job but people just didn’t really know how they appear. If anything, my recent photographic experience was proof that he was correct. When we look at ourselves in the mirror it’s usually for a particular reason such as to comb our hair, brush our teeth, apply makeup, shave, etc. And we don’t really look at our whole countenance. A professional photograph forces you to do just that.

While I’m starting to get used to seeing myself as I currently look (it was quite a shock at first, I can tell you) his advice and my recent experience came together in mind. He said everyone should have their photograph taken at least once a year so they can see themselves as they really are. I now think that’s good advice. While I don’t know if it’s as critical when we’re less 40 years old, I think the older we get, the better the advice it becomes. And since Anton only charged me $15 for what was, in essence, a passport photo, I think it was well worth the price.

By having a photograph of ourselves to consider each year we can, hopefully, adjust to the changes age brings upon us and, if necessary, make some adjustments—but hopefully not radical ones. No one likes to age but we can at least attempt to do it gracefully and with full recognition that it is happening.

So, if you happen to be in the Santa Fe area and need a passport photo (metric or otherwise), are looking for a wedding photographer or just want to see a decent photograph of what you look like now, go see Anton. He’ll light you beautifully. And tell him Millicent Gram sent you.

Anton Brkić
Pixel Images, Inc
197 Paseo De Peralta (In DeVargas Center)
http://www.pixelimagesinc.com/