New Newseum to Open alongside Major Washington Monuments
Cox News Service
Sunday, April 06, 2008
WASHINGTON — The press is known as the "Fourth Estate." So what are the other three estates?
The answer to this and a zillion or so other questions about the news industry, its culture and its history can be found inside a giant new gleaming glass-and-steel structure located on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and White House — along the presidential inaugural parade route. The front is dominated by a 74-foot-high, 50-ton marble tablet inscribed with the First Amendment.
 RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers The control room at the Newseum, which monitors all the exhibits and video feeds coming into the building. The newest museum in Washington, DC opens to the public on April 11th.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers Historic news broadcasts, original documentaries and breaking news images are presented on a 100-foot-long video wall at the Newseum, which opens to the public April 11th.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers A person walking past the Newseum stops to read some of the front pages from newspapers from each state and some international papers that are displayed daily on the sidewalk outside the newest museum which opens April 11th in the nation's capital.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers A display featuring all the photographs that have won a Pulitzer Prize since 1942 is one of the permanent exhibits at the Newseum, the newest museum in the nation's capital. Situated on Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol, visitors will be able to explore the history of news, including 35,000 historic newspaper front pages dating back nearly 500 years, to reporter Bob Woodward's notes as he unraveled the Watergate scandal, to comedian Stephen Colbert's first script about 'truthiness.' The Newseum opens to the public April 11th.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers Photos of journalists killed while reporting the news hang on a wall in the Journalists Memorial at the Newseum.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers Visitors at the Newseum can tape a broadcast at the 'Be A Reporter' stations where you can pick up a microphone, step before a camera and experience what it's like to be a TV reporter.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers A broadcast antenna from the North Tower of the World Trade Center sits before front pages from around the world reporting the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in the 9/11 Gallery at the Newseum.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers The News History Gallery features the Newseum's extensive collection of historic newspapers and magazines, dating from 1544 to the present. The Newseum opens to the public April 11th.  RICK MCKAY/Cox Newspapers A hallway leading to the food court and restrooms, an area that will be frequented by children, is decorated with newspaper comics at the Newseum, the newest museum in the nation's capital. Situated on Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol, the Newseum opens to the public April 11th. |
This "Newseum," billed as the "world's most interactive museum," is scheduled to open Friday, April 11.
The new Newseum cost $450 million to build and spreads across seven levels and 250,000 square feet of exhibit space and houses 15 theaters — including one where audiences experience "4-D time-travel." It replaces the old Newseum, which opened in 1997, cost $50 million to build and was located across the Potomac River in Arlington, Va.
"We ran out of room at the old Newseum," explained Charles Overby, a former editor of Gannett newspapers in Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi and the CEO of the Newseum. The original Newseum was attracting about half a million visitors a year, needed to expand and couldn't find room nearby, he explained.
"Our mission is to educate as many people as possible about the First Amendment," he said. On Pennsylvania Avenue, in sight of the Capitol and Supreme Court, is an ideal location to accomplish this mission, "so we decided to move to fish where the fish are."
The old Newseum was free but the new one is not. Overby explained that it gets no tax dollars. "We're nonprofit but privately financed."
Opening day will be free but afterward admission will be $20 for adults, $18 for seniors ages 65 and older and $13 for kids ages 7 through 12. Children under age 7 get in free. There will be group discounts. Tickets can be purchased online at newseum.org and in person at the Newseum admission desk.
"The Newseum will be a must-see in D.C. from opening day on," predicted Joe Urschel, its executive director. It took six years to plan, design and build the facility, which was funded largely through a grant from the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation that describes itself as "dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people."
Oh, the other three estates? The clergy, nobility and commoners — the three estates historically summoned to advise royal rulers. Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke later used the term "Fourth Estate" to describe the journalists sitting in the press gallery of the British House of Commons and declared them "more important than them all."
Every Newseum gallery has been designed to appeal to "skimmers, swimmers and divers," said Overby. "Skimmers" stroll through and catch the highlights as they pass. A "swimmer" will stop and read about some exhibit and engage in some interactive activity in gaining an overview. A "diver" wants to know a great deal about one exhibit.
"I've heard (the terms) used in connection with newspapers," Overby said. "If you want to spend two hours there, you can do that. If you want to spend two days, you can do that, too."
Print newspapers and network television evening newscasts are going through hard times with audiences shrinking for both, but Overby said he remains "optimistic about the public's desire to get news." The questions arise about what "platforms" will provide the delivery, and the changing technologies such as the Internet are examined in the Newseum, he said.
"It's not a shrine to the press. It shows the press warts and all," Overby said. "And it demonstrates how a free press is the cornerstone of our democracy."
Eleven major news organizations — including Cox Enterprises, Inc., owner of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Palm Beach Post, Austin American-Statesman, Dayton Daily News and other newspapers — contributed a combined $79 million to the Newseum. These media contributors also include The New York Times, News Corporation, Hearst Corporation, ABC News, NBC News and Time Warner. In recognition of their contributions, galleries bear their names.
For example, visitors entering The New York Times/Ochs-Sulzberger Family Great Hall of News will find themselves in a soaring, 90-foot tall atrium with a 40-by-22-foot high-definition media screen where breaking news will be shown. The Cox Enterprises First Amendment Gallery uses interactive exhibits and artifacts to explain the relevance of the five freedoms — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The News Corp. News History Gallery is the largest in the Newseum and traces centuries of news gathering and dissemination, with artifacts ranging from a 3,362-year-old Cuneiform brick from Sumeria to the breached door at the Watergate break-in that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. This evolution of news is told in five theaters and through a collection of more than 30,000 historic newspapers going back 500 years.
Visitors will also be able to see daily print front pages from 80 newspapers in an area adjacent to a terrace that provides one of the few views where the Supreme Court can be seen behind the Capitol dome. That day's front pages of more than 500 newspapers from around the world can be seen on a digital display.
Newseum officials said the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery contains "the largest and most comprehensive collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalism ever assembled." The gallery also features a documentary film in which news photographers explain their craft, as well as videotaped interviews with 68 Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers with access to 1,000 of their images.
Curators may have stretched to connect some of the most impressive exhibits to the news culture. The Newseum features one of the biggest portions of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany and a ominous guard tower, for instance. The gallery talks about RIAS — Radio in the American Sector — which broadcast news into East Berlin and examines the role of the news media in the 30-year history of the wall. But few visitors would automatically think "news media" when seeing the Berlin Wall.
Also on display is the radio tower that stood atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew a jetliner into the structure. A wall in this 9/11 Gallery displays newspaper front pages from Sept. 12 that told of the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the crash of a plane seized by terrorists into a Pennsylvania field. Journalists give accounts of how they covered these events and their reactions to them in a Newseum documentary film.
The "4-D" experience at the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Theater combines a digital 3-D film with a "4th D" of special effects including motion, air gusts and other environmental effects. At the "Be a TV Reporter" venue, visitors can do a stand-up television interview and then have the results posted online and ready to be zipped to YouTube.
Asked what is his favorite exhibit, Overby said it changes almost daily. But right now it's a high-tech world map that shows the status of press freedom in different countries at a glance.
"Most of the world does not have a free press," he said. The map "demonstrates how fragile a free press is worldwide."