BATTLE OF INK AND ICE

A thorough account of the unexpected connection between American media and Arctic exploration at the turn of the 20th century.

Hartman, who has written for the Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, and the Wall Street Journal, pulls back the curtain on an era in which newspapers not only paid for exclusive rights to explorers’ reports; they also funded full expeditions. He deftly links the dual narratives of Arctic exploration and the emergence of modern media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When “comparatively unknown southerner” Adolph Ochs assumed control of the New York Times—a newspaper many thought was beyond saving—near the end of the century, James Gordon Bennett Jr. and the New York Herald’s domination of the market began to slip. Ochs chose the paper’s new slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” and wanted the paper to become a respected “national authority” and an “impartial arbiter of ideas.” Bennett, meanwhile, planned to “give the public what it craved” and “achieve unprecedented circulation.” In spite of these varied approaches, the Times and Herald both found the quest for the North Pole newsworthy. Ochs and Bennett were on opposing sides as Arctic explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary asserted competing claims of reaching the North Pole. The ensuing battle featured payouts for damning proof that an explorer had invented his data, a nasty confrontation at a public lecture, and the stunningly flimsy presentation of evidence from both explorers. Though Hartman occasionally succumbs to the challenge of keeping dual subjects on track, he is a natural storyteller who breathes life into the most obscure details, keeping readers invested as the tale progresses. This is an engrossing and readable account of polar exploration, the birth of the modern newspaper, and media wars that feel all too familiar to modern readers.

Brace for media feuds and frostbite as Hartman entertains on the trail between New York City newspapers and the North Pole.