Abstract In 1988, the Soviet press agency Novosti invited journalists from 11 arctic nations in the West to meet 15 Soviet newspaper editors from northern Russia to consider an exchange of information about life in the north. Meeting in Leningrad, the journalists voted to form the Northern News Service (NNS), and for the next four years the organization operated an unprecedented exchange between Western and Russian newspapers, eventually reaching more than a million readers in the former Soviet Union and, at various times, eight nations in the west. An examination of the history of the NNS demonstrates a close congruency between the experience of the news service and the broader changes in Russia in the 1988-1992 period: born of glasnost' and perestroika, the service was affected by Gorbachev's conservative turn in late 1990; saw the Novosti leadership charged with sympathies for the coup and dismissed in mid-1991; operated under few political constraints in 1992; and faces increasing economic pressures for survival today. Computer-aided content analysis of 242 articles exchanged by NNS identifies the subjects that were of greatest interest to the news service, and reveals an "atypical vocabulary" especially focused on Northern matters and life in the North. Finally, this thesis suggests that the experience and performance of the Northern News Service may be understood as a continuing exercise in building and sharing a northern consciousness that searches for connections and mutuality among Northerners regardless of national residence.