Erin: Welcome to T2A chat for May 28th. We’re spending visiting a new interactive museum in Washington dedicated to the news. The Newseum is a place that takes visitors through history to the present using artifacts, photography, exhibits, films and interactive experiences. The largest gallery features more than 350 historic newspaper front pages, news books and magazines that span nearly 500 years. Susan Bennett is a Newseum spokesperson and she’s joining us. Let’s get started with a question from India
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M.Sathish Kumar, India (email): What is the reason behind the name Newseum?
Susan: We wanted something unique that would instantly reflect what we are and we thought this play on words said a lot in single word.
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Thomas J. Corcoran, DALBY, SWEDEN: Do you see any threat from the fact that many of the news outlets are owned by the same mega-companies? At one point, The New York Daily News had to divest itself of WPIX-TV Channel 11 as it was considered wrong for a newspaper to own and control a television station in its own main area of distribution. Now that ruling has been annulled and cities become not only One Newspaper Towns as quite often the publisher owns the local television and radio station as well.
Susan: We think this is such an important question and issue in the media today that we dedicated one of our eight cases in the news history gallery to the question of who controls the media? And in our exhibits we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of single media ownership in a community and we think this is a very important topic for debate among news consumers as well as news media owners.
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Hio Tiao Lim: Is the Newseum on-line? Or is it a site to be personally visited? Are the artifacts solely United States items ?
Susan: We do have a wonderful website: www.newseum.org and here you can find an overview of the content of the newseum and you can plan your personal visit to the Newseum as well as find out about new shows and programs coming to the Newseum. We have many international artifacts, for example, eight pieces of the Berlin Wall, a ballet box used in the election of Nelson Mandela for President of South Africa, We have a Romanian printing press and many many other artifacts from around the world.
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T.S.Mallikarjun, India (email): Can I obtain copies of previous news, front pages and magazines for educational purposes?
Susan: The best resource for you seems to be online. At the Newseum we have an archive of Newspaper front pages from certain historic dates and every day visitors can see 600 current front pages from newspapers around the world.
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Erin: We have some new university graduates visiting with T2A here at the newseum and I want to know first of all why you are here, what made an impression on you and are any of you planning to be journalists?
Mike: Two of the four of plan to be journalists...I wanted to see how the new Newseum looked after having visited the old Newseum. We wanted to see how the news is produced and what happens behind the scenes. The news is accessible to everyone all the time in so many ways and to see how journalism and its technology have developed is really interesting. It's interesting seeing articles about the Washington Post on the walls and I read the paper growing up in the Washington area so it's cool to have a bigger understanding of this publication. We liked the copies of the old newspapers, one was from Maryland with early English.
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D.Lokanadam, A C Rathinavel, India (email): Tell us about all the interactive exhibits…
Susan: We think the Newseum is the most interactive museum in the world. In all our exhibit galleries we try to tell the story, not just through words and artifacts, but through interactive experiences for the visitors. We have more than 130 interactive kiosks where visitors can probe into our historic databases, send an email comment, or play news-related games.
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Erin: Why a museum of news?
Susan: News is universal. Everyone has a need to know and people of all cultures share a curiosity about all things news -- history, current events, technology and entertainment.
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Erin: How many years did it take to put this amazing museum together, and how did you get such a great (prominent location)?
Susan: We began planning this museum eight years ago, in part, because of the success of the first Newseum, which operated in nearby Virginia for five years. We chose to close down that museum and build an even bigger and, we hope, better Newseum because most of the tourists who visit Washington, D.C., spend much of their time in the area around the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol. Timing was on our side because the District of Columbia had decided to sell the only piece of property on Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, which could be developed for new construction. Every other parcel already had been developed or was the site of a historically protected landmark.
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Erin: Are you a part of the Smithsonian?
Susan: We have no affiliation with the Smithsonian and, unlike the Smithsonian, receive no federal or other government funding.
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Erin: Describe the architectural design of the building, the exterior, it’s quite unique!
Susan: The striking glass and stone building fronts Pennsylvania Avenue with a giant window on the world, which is symbolic of the transparency of the media. Adorning the front facade is a 74-foot-tall, 50-ton panel of Tennessee marble that displays the First Amendment of the U.s. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition. Through the over-sized window, visitors can see a super-size (29-by-5-foot long) hi-definition media screen where we broadcast breaking news, documentaries, and sometimes, the visitors as they enter our 90-foot high atrium. (Erin adds that we'll make metric measurements available too).
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Erin: Is this museum “a monument to all the journalists/media people from around the globe or just the American media?
Susan: We think this is the most international museum in Washington. Many Newseum exhibits include information about journalists and media from around the world and one entire gallery, World News, is dedicated to international media. However, we make a point of not being a monument or temple to any journalist or to the profession itself. We want visitors to know that journalists and media organizations do make mistakes – most times inadvertent, sometimes international – and we have done a number of exhibits on such errors and lapses in judgment.
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Erin: How is the Newseum funded?
Susan: Our principal funder is the Freedom Forum, a non-profit, non-partisan foundation dedicated to freedom. We also have received $120 million in donations from private donors.
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Erin: How many visitors are expected this year?
Susan: We don’t like to make predictions because we have never operated in Washington, D.C., before and because our major competitors do not charge admission. We hope to do as well as we did in Virginia and that was about half a million visitors a year on average.
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Erin: How many exhibits are there in the Newseum, and how many are permanent?
Susan: The Newseum has seven levels with 15 theaters, 14 galleries and two state-of-the-art television studios. We also have a 4-D theater experience. These are permanent exhibits but, unlike many museums, we pride ourselves on changing every day. So in most of the galleries, we designed areas that be changed or updated easily. We also have large changing Exhibits Gallery, where we will open our first show June 20.
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Erin: If a visitor had only 15 minutes, what’s the one thing they should see?
Susan: That’s like asking me to choose my favorite child. One spectacular thing is the view. From our 6th Floor Terrace, you have a spectacular view of the U.S. Capitol and National Mall. But I would not leave the Newseum without going to the lower level of the Newseum and seeing the Berlin Wall gallery, which contains eight pieces of the original wall and a three-story guard tower that stood near Checkpoint Charlie.
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Erin: One of the most compelling and moving exhibits is the one devoted to the 9/11 attack (boxes of Kleenex are placed at the entrance to the room), and the one devoted to the fallen journalists…. Can you describe them?
Susan: Just weeks after 9/11, we began interviewing journalists who had covered this tragedy for a book we later published, “Running Toward Danger.” This exhibit tells the story of those journalists who covered the terrorist attacks in Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York City. The focal point of the gallery is a broadcast antenna that stood atop the north tower of the World Trade Center. We also have the cameras, press passes and final images of William Biggart, a freelance photographer who was the only journalists killed in those attacks. A very moving video has been done of the journalists who covered the New York City attacks. Biggart is just one of the 1,843 journalists remembered on the glass walls of our Journalists Memorial. In this gallery, the names of journalists who died while reporting the news around the world are etched in glass. Photos of some of those journalists form a wall of sorrow. On kiosks, you can call up the name of a journalist, media organizations or the country in which they died to learn more about each individual.
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Erin: Are there any exhibits exclusively for children?
Susan: We think everyone enjoys all the exhibits but a particular area of interest to children is the Interactive Newsroom where they can “Be a Photographer” or “Be a Reporter” in interactive games. They also can do live stand-ups as a TV reporter and receive a video of their performance.
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Erin: We noticed on the top floor a display of the printouts of some of the major daily papers from the US and around the world with today’s date (!) – How do you do it?! (logistics behind it)
Susan: We received more than 600 newspaper front pages from around the world each day. The newspapers send electronic versions of their front pages, which we post on our web sites. We also take a representative sampling of those papers, print them out and display in our Front Page Gallery of the Newseum, as well as in glass boxes outside the front door. They have attracted a lot of attention of Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Erin: Are there plans to expand and tell us about some future planned exhibits?
Susan: Right now, our motto is let the building speak to us. We have only been open six weeks so we are trying to listen to our visitors and judge their reactions to various exhibits before making any changes. We are, however, planning ahead for our instant exhibits, our changing areas and our next major show. Our first big show, which is in the final stages of development, will be “G-Men and Journalists” – an exhibit that looks at the 100-year history of the history of the FBI and the sometimes cooperative, often combative relationship between the FBI and media.
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Erin: Are there any exhibits the Newseum wanted but was not able to acquire?
Susan: Not yet but we are always on the lookout for another blockbuster story that we want to tell.
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Erin: What does the Newseum want visitors to take with them when they leave?
Susan: We hope visitors will leave with a greater appreciation of freedom and the need for a free press in any democratic society. We also hope that by explaining how and why news is made that the visitors will have a greater appreciation for the challenges faced by journalists every day.
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Erin: That wraps T2A chat with Susan Bennett about The Newseum. You can learn more about this interactive museum about the news by going to voanews.com We hope you can join us Wednesday, June 4th at 1800 utc when we meet polar explorer Will Steger, Sam Branson (son of Virgin Group mogul Sir Richard Branson) and a team of 20-something adventurers from across the globe - Norway, Great Britain, Canada and the United States. They will share their findings from their 60-day, 1,400-mile dogsled expedition in the Arctic. That's Wednesday, June 4th at 1800 utc, right here on voanews.com See you then!
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