So, What’s News?

Washington DC is not what I would call an exotic location. But as capital cities go, after Jerusalem, Washington DC is way out front on my list. While the USA is not, has never been, and doesn’t seek to be an empire, the architecture of its capital city is the ultimate in imperial design. The stated power in the design and construction of its public buildings, is an expression of that nation’s strength. The planners of the American capital intended it to be so – so that every citizen who visits the nation’s capital will be filled with pride and pleasure and come away from a sojourn to the city with an overwhelming feeling of patriotism.

Indeed, to walk the Mall in Washington DC, from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, is to marvel at the cultural wealth of what is still our planet’s single great power. I could write endless lines on each of the museums there – and as you already know, after travel, museums are my great love – and I have spent full days and more in each of the amazing institutions that sit astride the oak-lined boulevard that is the Mall. I’ve wandered – and wondered – through the magnificent art in the National Gallery and soared into the great yonder at the Air & Space Museum, delved into natural history at the museum of that name and into American history in the museum of that name. The top of the Washington memorial provides a view of America’s public structures that fills even this non-American with pride, and the reflecting pool at 6 o’clock in the morning is as still as a mirror. I have never skipped the sunken “V” of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial from where I always come away humbled. I go there because I feel a commonality with the veteran’s who have made their lives around the memorial. Anyone who has been to war knows and understands this deep and purposeful cameraderie.

But my favorite place in Washington DC is not on the Mall –even though it is very close. I’m talking about one of Washington’s lesser known museums, the Newseum, the Museum of News and Journalism, located on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Based upon the following ten principles, the Newseum is probably the ultimate hi-tech museum experience available anywhere. Those principles are:

1. The free press is a cornerstone of democracy.
2. People have a need to know.
3. Journalists have a right to tell.
4. Finding the facts can be difficult.
5. Reporting the story can be dangerous.
6. Freedom includes the right to be outrageous.
7. Responsibility includes the duty to be fair.
8. News is history in the making.
9. Journalists provide the first draft of history.
10. A free press, at its best, reveals the truth.

Newspaper front pages from 500 locations around the globe are available daily. I learned how news develops, how its covered, how its distributed; I discovered the difference between news on paper, via the internet, by television, and on the radio. I was amazed at the focused sound system that carries broadcast news projected on mammoth screens to individual ears viewing from across the hall in a manner that what I was hearing did not disturb the person standing next to me. I was able to review five centuries of journalistic information in a series of small exhibition spaces that use mutiple media in so clever a manner that I could personalise it to my private needs. Over and above that all, there are neat gadgets, shows, a newspaper from the date of everyone’s birth, and a plethora of interactivity that turn this into a must-see museum for families.

Washington DC’s Newseum – Read all about it!