Stories & Lifestyle: The “Newseum” in Washington

On April 11, the Newseum - the biggest media museum in the world - opened in Washington DC, and as could be expected in the mother county of exaggeration, it had to come with a number of superlatives. According to the museum's brochure, it is supposed to be the "most interactive museum in the world" - however the level of interactivity will be measured. The museum for the news media and freedom of press takes its visitors on a time travel journey from the invention of printing into the digital age. An entire exhibition is dedicated to the role of the media during the era of the Berlin Wall. The Newseum is to be a new tourist attraction, formerly in a small building in one of the Washington suburbs, now in a high-tech building in the center of the capital's museum district. Construction took ten years and is worth a total of $450 million (€286).
In any case, the Newseum is a spectacular venture. First off, there's the location - a landmark location that was fought over for years - it was once the location of the district's Department of Labor - 555 Pennsylvania Avenue (Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street).

In July 2000 the foundation Freedom Forum bought the location from the city for one million Dollars. The man behind Freedom Forum and the Newseum is Allen Neuharth, whose main accomplishment is the founding of USA Today published by the Gannett Company. The newspaper, founded in 1982, became the paper with the most successful American newspaper with currently almost 2.3 million copies a day - despite the fact, or maybe because it is also being called McPaper or McNews.

ELECTRONIC THEME PARK AND "9/11 GALLERY"

The museum itself is a mixture of electronic theme park; a number of television and radio studios in which you can pretend to be a presenter or a reporter; big and small theaters and auditoriums; a photo exhibition of Pulitzer Price winners and finally an interactive museum commemorating history and present day of the news media. In the atrium, a news helicopter - the American news media couldn't survive without them - hangs from the ceiling on steel cables, in addition to a reconstruction of the first news satellite that, among other things, broadcasted a Beatles concert in 1964.

As special significant historical events and their representation in the media, the museum has selected the construction and fall of the Berlin Wall and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and has dedicated entire rooms in the museum to these events, along with numerous exhibits and documentation. Both are indeed events that stand for beginnings and ends of entire eras. The Newseum is proud to explain that the Berlin Wall Gallery, with eight sections of the wall and a guard tower is the largest exhibition for the inner-German border outside of Germany.

Right above it is the 9/11 Gallery with the twisted and bent communications tower of the World Trade Center's North Tower that fell to the ground from a height of more than 500 meters (1,640 feet) when the building collapsed. Also a limestone chunk of the Pentagon and a piece of the jet engine of the fourth hijacked plane that crashed on a field near Shanksville in Pennsylvania are being displayed. The gallery also includes a tribute to photo journalist William Biggart - the only journalist who died covering the 9/11 attacks - with his cameras that were found in the ruins of the South Tower, his notebooks, and some of the last photos he took. The north wall of the gallery displays front pages of newspapers from all 50 states and 34 other countries.

Get a first impression on
www.newseum.org