During my last visit to Washington DC, one of the stops at the top of my list was the Newseum. The 250,000 sq. ft. museum, which opened in 2008, is spread out over seven levels, creatively mixing five centuries of news history with hands on exhibits and technology. Located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, N.W. between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, it's adjacent to the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall.
The Newseum features 15 main exhibition galleries that explore news history, electronic news, photojournalism, world news and how the media have covered major historical events. The most moving are the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 Gallery. The Berlin Wall exhibition features one of the largest collections of original Berlin wall sections outside Germany, and examines the role of the media in the 30-year history of the wall.
The 9/11 Gallery is devoted to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It focuses on how the media around the world responded to one of the biggest news stories of the century. On display are front pages from September 12, artifacts and a documentary that features journalists' accounts of their reactions that day. There's also a tribute to photojournalist William Biggart, who died covering the attacks, along with some of his final images. The mangled antenna from the North Tower of the World Trade Center is also on display.
Newseum - Permanent Galleries and Exhibits
- News Corporation News History Gallery
- Cox Enterprises First Amendment GalleryTime Warner World News Gallery
- Bloomberg Internet, Tv and Radio Gallery
- Today's Front Pages
- Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery
- Comcast 9/11 Gallery
- Berlin Wall
- Journalists Memorial
- ABC News Changing Exhibits Gallery
- Pulliam Family Great Books Gallery
- NBC News Interactive Newsroom
- Bancroft Family Ethics Center
- Hewlett-Packard New Media Gallery
The new HP New Media Gallery, which opened in April 2012, is the first permanent addition to the museum since it opened. The interactive gallery uses the latest technology so visitors can experience a multidimensional social network. The gallery features five "experiences" and a multiscreen video presentation that illustrate the evolution and progression of global media. Live Twitter feeds fill touch-screen monitors, connecting visitors with trending news stories. Visitors may post photos of themselves onto screens and comment on events of the day. Major news and events and viral videos, including the first Twitter reports of the 2008 China earthquake and the Facebook posts that fueld the Egyptian revolution are also on display.
Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press is currently on exhibit at the Newseum and on display through the 2013 inauguration. The exhibit explores how media coverage of presidential campaigns has evolved from William McKinley's 1896 front-porch campaign to Barack Obama's 2008 Internet campaign. Among the 120 artifacts is a microphone used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to deliver his famous fireside chats, handwritten notes taken by John F. Kennedy during a 1960 presidential debate with Richard Nixon and the jacket worn by Hilary Rodham Clinton when she became the first person to use her own website to declare her candidacy for the presidency. There is also a lighter side to the exhibit, with costumes and props from Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. The exhibit closes Jan. 27, 2013.
