Articles
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TG Alley – Newseum By Jan Butsch Schroder
Unless I’m fasting for a medical procedure, or had all my food stolen by bears, I don’t miss meals. So when I tell you that when my kids and I visited the Newseum in Washington DC we toured for six hours, totally skipping lunch, you get an idea of how unbelievably fascinating and engaging this place is. This new museum examines five centuries of historic events and the role of media in covering them, with the primary focus on the past century. And using the latest technology and interactive exhibits, you can select to hear or see news coverage of dozens of actual events. You can also see dozens of actual objects from history, such as the Unabomber’s cabin where he lived in the Montana wilderness, the M-1 rifle carried by Patty Hearst as a member of the SLA and J. Edgar Hoover’s desk. Some of the most interesting to us were eight sections of the Berlin Wall and a 40-foot-high watchtower where guards stood poised to shoot anyone attempting to escape the communist regime in East Berlin. The gallery also has three screens that show videos tracing the role of media through the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. Every detail in this museum seems so well thought out – up to the boxes of tissues located outside of the 9/11 gallery called Chronicling an Attack on America. In addition to a film of media coverage and front pages from newspapers around the world about the attacks, the gallery has a tribute to photojournalist William Biggart, the journalist who died covering the attacks along with the final photos he took. The Newseum has 250,000 square feet of such exhibits. Located right on Pennsylvania Avenue, the terrace on the 6th floor offers an unparalleled view of the Capitol. The museum is home to two TV studios as well, where NPR tapes “Talk of the Nation” and George Stephanopoulos broadcasts “The Week of George Stephanopoulos.” And if all this news coverage gets you hankering to try your hand at anchoring, you can visit one of the eight “Be A Reporter” stations where you can choose a story line, step in front of the camera with a microphone and report it on film yourself to view later on the internet. And yes, they do have a restaurant called The Source by Wolfgang Puck, but my son had his heart set on a Five Guys burger, so it was off to Georgetown for us for that long-overdue meal. Although there is a children’s area, I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone under the age of 15. But anyone 16 and older should find it as fascinating as we did. Yes, tickets here are $20, where a lot of museums in DC are free. But I promise you’ll get your money’s worth. Oh and be sure to visit the News and Press Freedoms Around the Globe gallery.Although we may get frustrated by the state of media coverage in our country today, one visit here to see the map depicting the degrees of censorship prevalent over much of the world will renew your pride in our country. Corny as it may sound, you will leave here proud to be an American with renewed appreciation of the fact that no matter what happens in our country or around the world, our media is there and free to cover it.
555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. 888/NEWSEUM (888/639-7386)
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