Barber's Pole

"I AM AT THE POLE!" shrieked a headline in London's Daily Mail (circ. 2,138-510), and below it, in the hoary old tradition of British I-witness journalism, ran Correspondent Noel Barber's breathless dispatch: "I have reached the South Pole. I am the sixth Briton in history to do so, the first for 45 years since Scott's party of five reached here in 1912, only to perish on the return journey."

"Bus Run." Back in Fleet Street, Barber's "triumphant arrival" at the Pole in a U.S. Navy plane won a game salute from the Daily Mirror (circ. 4,658,793). But Beaverbrook's Daily Express (circ. 4.024,800), the Mail's archrival in the derring-do dateline, was as elaborately unimpressed as its big type could say. On the day of his triumph, without mentioning Barber, the paper ran a cut of the thickly populated U.S. polar base, "The 'Town at the South Pole," and noted pointedly that "the polar 'bus run' flight has become a commonplace."

For days, though, the Pole was the top of the world for Barber, who has flown 1,000,000 miles since 1953 on assignments that sent him tracking Stanley's route through Africa, exploring a Moroccan smuggling trail, catching an Elsa Maxwell party in the Aegean and a Russian bullet in Budapest. Correspondent Barber, a sandy-haired 46, filed happily about the cold, the hazards, the food, the preparations for welcoming the Hillary expedition from New Zealand (see SCIENCE). He also told how he planted a homemade Union Jack at the Pole. One angle that escaped him: the long-established scientific mission of his U.S. hosts at the polar base.

The Last Word. Crowed a Mail editorial over its icy ace: "He is among the great reporters of the world." The Express could not stand this, last week struck back with a new contest. YOUR TRIP TO THE SOUTH POLE, ran a Page One headline (then a subhead FOR OF COURSE EVERYBODY'S DOING IT). Said the story: "The winner wouldn't be alone when he got there. These days politicians--even entertainers!--are flying in 'on the milk run' almost every day. WHY DON'T YOU GO TOO!" Next day the Express announced the details: "All you have to do: write on a postcard--in not more than 50 words--the message I would like to deliver to the people at the South Pole."

The Mail did not stoop to reply, but its sister Rothermere paper, the Daily Sketch (circ. 1,304,892), cried in protest: "Utter rubbish." Added the Sketch: "If the Daily Express manages to get one reader to the South Pole by the end of January, we will pay -L-500 to any charity the Daily Express chooses." In the midst of the English winter, hundreds of Express readers entered the contest to get to the Pole. But at week's end, while Fleet Street bet privately that the Sketch's money was safe, the Mail's Barber had the last word. When Hillary reached the Pole, the Mail's banner line bragged: LUNCH WITH HILLARY, and the byline read: "From Noel Barber, the only British newspaperman there."

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