Before reality television, people satisfied the urge to see new places and do new things by reading about the exploits of risk takers, including explorers. Before the internet or radio, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the way to do that was through the newspaper. Back then, the modern mass-market daily newspaper was still new.
In “Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of New Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media,” Darrell Hartman threads together two themes: the rivalry between New York City’s major newspapers and polar exploration.
An engraved portrait of American newspaper proprietor James Gordon Bennett, Jr.,  circa 1880s. (Kean Collection/Getty Images)
The first thread tells of the 19th century emergence of the modern newspaper, in New York City. In 1835, James Gordon Bennett, Sr. founded the New York Herald, the first paper which focused on news independent of political parties, the New York elite, or advertisers. It made Bennett one of the richest men of the day, and simultaneously made him of the most hated (except for his readers) man in New York. Early parts of the book detail these New York newspaper battles….