The Pigeon Press

When a young reporter named Daniel H. Craig started sending scoops to the Baltimore Sun in the 1830s using carrier pigeons, he was on the cutting edge of a news service that would eventually be known as the Associated Press. In Race to the Cape, readers learn how Craig nurtured the fledgling organization — and how a small outport on the southeastern tip of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula helped him along the way.

A CBC Radio producer in Vancouver, Theresa O’Leary tells the story of the founding of the New York Associated Press in 1846. It provided editors with a new kind of news. “Whatever the news, it was presented with bias,” O’Leary writes of an earlier time. “It was neither objective nor fact based.” Instead, information about politics and current events was “delivered through the lens of the wealthy establishment.” Craig’s boss, A. S. Abell of the Sun, wanted his new daily to offer fairness for “the common good.” He chose...