Questions 10-19

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.

12. According to the passage, one important reason why newspapers printed daily weather maps during the first half of the twentieth century was

(A) the progress in printing technology

(B) a growing interest in air transportation

(C) a change in atmospheric conditions

(D) the improvement of weather forecasting techniques

i think option D is correct considering the underlined part.

我也做了这篇文章，我当时选择了D，后来看来答案，再到原文中去找，感觉B和D都是对的。

原文第五行 interest in aviation and progress in air-mass analysis made weather patterns more newsworthy 说明B和D是并列的。