A Museum to Celebrate News   

Back when he was reporting on Watergate, Bob Woodward hardly expected that one of his notebooks would be destined for a museum. When Peter Arnett covered the Persian Gulf War in Baghdad, his microphone was his lifeline to CNN viewers, not an object he envisioned on display along with the first color studio cameras CBS used to film Walter Cronkite.

The memorabilia of journalism, the tools of the trade and the stories that inspired the headlines of the past have found a home in the Freedom Forum's $50 million, high-tech "Newseum," which is scheduled to open officially on April 18.

The Newseum's creators spent five years designing, building and collecting items for the 72,000-square-foot museum at the Freedom Forum's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Billed as "the world's only interactive museum of news," the Newseum is a place where the Fourth Estate can show off its history and accomplishments, at the same time promoting better understanding of the need to know and the need to tell.

"Five years ago, I don't think people anticipated the magnitude of this project, and neither did we," says Freedom Forum Chairman and USA Today founder Allen H. Neuharth. "We hope the museum will help the press and the public understand each other. It's as simple as that."

The exhibits in the News-eum were created by New York's highly respected museum design firm, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which helped to create the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Free to the public, the three-floor Newseum has galleries devoted to news history, a 220-seat domed theater with a high-definition video screen and a "News Byte Cafe" equipped with several computer terminals that allow visitors access to online news services.

Among the permanent exhibits is a two-story interactive newsroom with a seamless video news wall featuring constantly changing panels of breaking international news. The news wall draws upon feeds from some 170 video news sources around the world. Also featured on the wall are digital reproductions of the day's front pages from 70 daily newspapers.

In another exhibit, the Newseum makes use of video touch-screen technology to allow visitors to hear the likes of Ben Bradlee, Roger Mudd, Gene Roberts, Helen Thomas and Mike Wallace discussing journalism and sharing their personal experiences.

Other multimedia displays let Newseum visitors see firsthand what it's like to be a reporter, an editor or a TV anchor. A state-of-the-art broadcast studio gives them an opportunity to talk with journalists producing public affairs programming on site, while an "ethics center" gives News-eum visitors the chance to wrestle with some of the toughest issues faced by the media today.

"This has been quite an experience for us because news people don't normally build museums," says Charles L. Overby, president and CEO of the Freedom Forum. "We started out with an idea, but not much more than that."

The Newseum's early planners didn't give much thought to collecting artifacts. But the worldwide searches that ensued led to some eclectic acquisitions. Antique dealers managed to find a statue of Thoth, the Egyptian god of scribes, dating from around 600 B.C. New York's Sotheby's auction house was the source of trading cards and other objects depicting the Yellow Kid, a popular cartoon character who first appeared in the New York World in 1895. A Gutenberg Bible from 1455, on loan from the New York Public Library, and a letter from Christopher Columbus add to the historical displays.

Exhibition curator Cara Sutherland contacted New York's Sing Sing Correctional Facility to track down one of the Newseum's most haunting exhibits — the electric chair used to execute Ruth Snyder in 1928 after she and her boyfriend conspired to kill her husband. Pictures of the electrocution were splashed across the front page of the New York Daily News after a photographer snuck a camera into the prison.

While yesterday's news sets the stage for the News-eum, its officials say they want it to be a living museum where history and modern interactive technology mix with real-world journalism. To achieve this goal, the Newseum will feature a journalist-in-residence who will field questions from visitors each day, as well as forums, workshops and classrooms for school programs.

"It's a great opportunity for journalists to come and get a sounding from people," says Newseum Executive Director Peter S. Prichard, who left his job as editor-in-chief of USA Today in order to direct the museum's staff of about 100 and will become president of the Freedom Forum in June. "We hope people will leave with a better understanding of journalism and more enthusiasm for the First Amendment."