Blame it on Conrad Black, a man whose absurdly rich vocabulary does not include the word “hubris.” In 1998, against the advice of pretty much everyone, he launched the neoconservative National Post in Toronto’s already overcrowded newspaper market, sparking a journalistic battle royale of unprecedented scope and nastiness. Former Postie Chris Cobb’s gossipy Ego and Ink – based on interviews with dozens of players – provides a compelling post-fight wrap-up of the action, packed with replays of all the choice eye gouges, hair pulls, and vicious kicks to the crotch.

There is no newspaper market in the English-speaking world more competitive (or sleazier) than England’s. And thus, in the lead-up to hostilities, both Conrad and his enemies at The Globe and Mail packed the upper reaches of their mastheads with veteran warriors from the other side of the pond. These are the sort of folks the English used to send out to the colonies to put down native rebellions.

The most interesting rogue in Ego and Ink’s extensive gallery is certainly the Globe’s reptilian editor-in-chief, Richard Addis (Adisss in Frank magazine), a man who once compared a mass layoff to “cleaning out an old sock drawer.” Addis’s ignorance of the Canadian scene was breathtaking: he was unclear about the difference between Alaska and Canada, and infamously remarked in an editorial meeting, “Who is Wayne Gretzky?” He frequently treated his underlings at the Globe with disdain, and was loathed by much of his staff in return.

But Addis and company quickly grasped the lay of the Canadian journalistic landscape. Whereas British papers often wear their ideological prejudices on their sleeves, their North American counterparts tend to insist on a relative degree of impartiality. In Cobb’s telling, the British imports, almost to a man, disdained our culture of objectivity as boring and colonial, while Addis adhered to it, shrewdly nurturing his paper’s reputation for fair and serious coverage.

Over at the Post, editor Ken Whyte and his British generals took a more classically British, ideological approach, and paid the price. As Conrad Black himself admits in a surprisingly candid interview with Cobb, the Post’s endless harping in its front section on right-wing pet issues such as the “brain drain” gave many readers the perception that the paper was anti-Canadian. Leery of guilt by association, advertisers stayed away and the paper foundered.

Cobb’s account shows signs of having been written quickly, and for a business book it’s short on hard financial numbers. But Ego and Ink beautifully captures the flavour of the newspaper war and the personalities of its players, from the press barons to the cub reporters. The brief period when the Post defied financial gravity was a golden one for Toronto journalism, attendant nastiness notwithstanding. Writers were being headhunted by rival publications for the first time in decades; wads of cash were pouring into writing and design; and the city was graced with some of the best newspaper content in its history. Ego and Ink is required reading for serious students of Canadian journalism.