Newseum

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Screenshot of Newseum's "Today's Front Pages"

The world’s first interactive museum of news, the Newseum, opened in Rosslyn, Virginia in Arlington County, on April 18, 1997. Its stated mission is "to help the public and the news media understand one another better". In five years, the Newseum became an internationally recognized attraction, drawing more than 2.25 million visitors and receiving some critical acclaim for its exhibits and programs. The plaudits, however, were not universal. Thomas Frank wrote a particularly scathing review in his 2000 book, One Market Under God:

“

Maybe Arlington is where journalism has come to die, in a place as distant as could be found from the urban maelstrom and the rural anger that once nourished it, within easy reach of the caves of state, sunk deep in the pockets of corporate power, here where busloads of glassy-eyed, well-dressed high schoolers from the affluent suburbs of Virginia can play anchorman on its grave.

”

In 2000, Freedom Forum leadership determined that the best way to increase the impact and to appeal to much larger audiences would be by moving the Newseum across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. The original Newseum was closed on March 3, 2002 in order to allow its staff to concentrate on building the new, larger museum. The new museum will open its doors to the public on October 15, 2007, according to Freedom Forum CEO Charles Overby.

After obtaining a landmark location at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street, the design of the building and its exhibits became the focus. The Newseum Board selected noted exhibit designer Ralph Appelbaum, who had designed the original Newseum in Arlington, Virginia, and architect James Stewart Polshek, who designed the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to work on the new project.

This design team had the following goals:

To design a building that would be an architectural icon, easily recognized and remembered by visitors from around the world.
To create a museum space three times as large as the original, with the capacity for more than two million visitors a year.
And finally to celebrate the First Amendment and be a beacon for a strong free press.

Highlights of the building design — unveiled October 2002 — include a façade featuring a "window on the world", 57 ft × 78 ft (17 m × 24 m), which looks out on Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall while letting the public see inside to the visitors and displays. It also features the 45 words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, etched into a stone panel facing Pennsylvania Avenue.

The 250,000-square-foot Newseum will include a 90-foot- (27 m) high atrium, seven levels of displays, 15 theaters, a dozen major galleries, many more smaller exhibits, two broadcast studios, and an expanded interactive newsroom.

The building also features an oval, 500-seat "Forum" theater; approximately 145,500 square feet (14,000 m²) gross of housing facing Sixth and C streets; 75,000 square feet (7,000 m²) of office space for the staff of the Newseum and Freedom Forum; and more than 11,000 square feet of conference center space on two levels located directly above the Newseum Atrium.

NBC’s Tim Russert, a Newseum trustee, said, "The Newseum made a pretty good impression in Arlington, but at your new location on Pennsylvania Avenue you will make an indelible mark."

The museum currently maintains a website which is updated daily with images and PDF versions of newspaper front pages from around the world.

The Newseum's operations are funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to "free press, free speech and free spirit for all people".