Inside the Newseum
Look through the glass walls of a television studio at the Newseum — the much-heralded $450 million museum created by, for and about news acolytes, news reporters, newshounds, newsreaders, news watchers, newsmakers and news advocates that opens on Friday — and you get an imposing view of the Capitol. But that also means that from the Capitol you also have a clear view of the glass facade of the Newseum, which is part of the point. This museum is determined to be noticed.
Though it is built with contributions from broadcast and print news organizations (including The New York Times Company and the Ochs-Sulzberger family) and charges $20 for adult admission, it presents itself as if it were a public institution with the word “National” in its name. It lays claim to the public interest and then insists upon it: its glass façade includes a 74-foot high, 50-ton marble tablet scripturally inscribed with the complete text of the first amendment.
Step inside the building designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, and the demand for attention only increases. The 90-foot-high atrium features a 40’ by 22’ high definition LCD monitor that can be raised or lowered, brightened or dimmed, displaying museum happenings, broadcasting studio events or historical footage; nearby a news helicopter hangs in mid air.
The history of the press is laid out in an extensive time line of documents and objects, including a 1603 broadsheet showing the coronation of England King James I, a 1787 copy of the Maryland Gazette containing the new United States constitution, and a copy of the 1948 Chicago Daily Tribune mistakenly announcing “Dewey Beats Truman” — just below the famous photograph of a victorious Truman holding the same paper. There are samplings of radio and television broadcasts and an “interactive newsroom,” in which the non-camera shy can pretend to be television reporters.
A display of related 9/11 artifacts and newspapers, with the flag pole that was on the Twin Towers in the center.
Undeterred by fears of recession, accelerating layoffs in the print news business and worries about the very future of newspapers (indeed, ignoring them), the Newseum has created a publicity-seeking monument to the news business, its history and its hyper-linked future.
The Newseum is an appealing example of how a museum can both teach and entertain with clever use of images and interactive displays, and compact explanations that will repay serious reading while offering edutainment to the many school children expected to visit. The 9/11 display, with its wall of front pages from around the world Sept. 12, 2001, and its film recounting the fate of journalists covering the event, deals with wounds so fresh, a box of tissues is made available.
Photographs of journalists who died in the line of duty.
And for all the celebration of the news business, care is taken not to descend too deeply into puffery. Along with the many testimonials to journalistic courage and a memorial to journalists who lost their lives, there are examples of distortions that mar the profession’s past: the frauds perpetrated by a Pulitzer Prize winner or by a trusted reporter, the distorted reporting that led the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2004 to acknowledge that in the 1960s it had given the “front-page news” of the civil rights movement “back-page coverage,” or even Peter Arnett’s 1991 broadcast on CNN that swallowed Saddam Hussein’s account of the United States having bombed a “baby-milk plant.”
Only Mark Twain (who invented his share of journalistic hoaxes) had a plausible excuse: reporting, he said, “was awful slavery for a lazy man.” And there’s at least one sign that the Newseum knows when not to take itself too seriously: scattered tiles in the museum bathrooms are inscribed with journalistic gaffes and embarrassing corrections.
The Newseum is intent on promoting the idea that the press has a mission to “do good,” to change the world for the better. A related idea: that when great good does happen, the press has played a major role. A major exhibition space here is devoted to several sections of the Berlin wall. The wall text suggests that a free press helped bring the wall down. Actually, it happened when much of the press was looking the other way.
As for the claim of serving the public good – is any vision of the good really so beyond contest? Sometimes the most difficult task is to report accurately despite one’s vision of the good or a desire to change the world.
To see the daily struggle with accuracy and understanding, take a look at one of the most intriguing galleries at the Newseum, reproduced in sidewalk displays below. Every day some 80 front pages of newspapers from all over the world and from the 50 states are mounted, along with a touch screen offering scores more. Here the press can be seen for what it is: a noble, necessary and hopeless enterprise.
Via N.Y. Times
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