Just went to visit the Neweum in Washington DC, the world's largest collection of journalistic memorabilia. Closed six years, the museum’s new home has been built at a cost of $350 million and is now located in the center of Washington. The site, itself, cost $100 million and has a view of the Capitol, the National Gallery and the Supreme Court.
The first thing that greets visitors to the museum is a massive fifty-ton marble tablet etched with the words of the First Amendmentwhich has protected the American press for more than two hundred years. Once inside you do a lot of walking. There are seven floors, covering 250,000 sq ft., 14 galleries. one of which is devoted to thousands of years of newsgathering, 15 theaters, two television studio, thousands of Pulitzer Prize- winning photographs and walls covered with the front pages of hundred of newspapers, which are changed daily.
In the gallery that is devoted to journalistic history, the first English “paper” tells of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. (There is also a German paper with the Spanish version of the Battle that does not mention the loss of Spanish ships.) There is also reports in other British periodicals of their time about the Salem witch trials and Blackbeard’s last stand. Plus a copy of “The Daily Courant” of 1702, the first daily.
The Newseum also has on display such contrasting historic items as a section of the Berlin Wall including the guard tower that loomed over Check Point Charley, the bullet-riddled van used by Time magazine reporters during the siege at Sarejevo, the pencil of the reporter killed in the Battle of Little Big Horn, which was Custer's Last Stand in 1876,the lap top used by Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl who was murdered in Pakistan. Also on display, there is the telephone that Rupert Murdoch used to run NewsCorp between 2002 and 2006, complete with management and editors’ speed dials
Currently there is an exhibition of The FBI and the Press which includes the bleak cabin in which the Unabomber lived and the ladder that the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby climbed. Other exhibits highlight coverage of the bombing of New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It includes the mangled TV and radio transmission tower that stood atop the Twin Towers. There is a long, very moving video about the experiences of journalists and photographers who covered the attack. The Newseum attendants even hands out tissues to the viewers.
There is lots of razzle-dazzle throughout. There are booths in which visitors can pretend to be a TV reporter with the White House or Capitol in the background. They can read from a teleprompter or give their own report which can be taken home for a fee
Expensive in a city where many museums are free—admission is $20 –it is proving to be highly popular. Still there has been some criticism over its costs, especially at a time when media is going through such hard times. Some also think that it is all a bit overblown, making it seem as if the press is the news rather than the means of reporting it. And walking through during this time of financial crisis, it struck me that there seemed to be so little devoted to financial and business coverage. After all the business of media and its future is the issue that right now has become so important to journalists and journalism.
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