sign in sign up
<<
Home , Newseum

resolutely upbeat narrative is less cer- ASSESSMENT tain. "Everyone now considers them- selves a press critic," notes Joe Urschel, the Newseum's executive director and Best Face Forward senior vice president. The story that the Newseum tells At the Newseum, a troubled industry looks good under glass is not completely sanitized; individual BY JULIA M. KLEIN blunders, from DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN to Jayson Blair, do get some play. But just as the 's National Air and Space , with its close ties to the military, touts the wonders of flight, and the National Museum ofthe American Indian offers a mostly uncriti- cal perspective on the tribes who help curate it, the 's News- eum reflects what we, on our sunniest days, think of ourselves. Not that we're having many sunny days, given the crescendo of buyouts, layoffs, and other cutbacks, not to men- tion shareholder uprisings and general AND WE THINK TODAY'S REPORTERS HAVE IT TOUGH. corporate timiult. In view of all these Picture this: To land a job, the journalistic aspirant known to history as economic (not to mention existential) Nellie Bly agrees to feign mental illness in order to uncover abuses at the notorious woes, the Newseum's tone is remark- asylum for women on Blackwell's Island. In a new "4-D" version of this famil- ably sanguine. Credit the museum with iar tale at the Newseum, an editor warns the plucky Bly of the obvious dangers taking a longer view—placing its faith involved. But how else is a Victorian woman to gain street cred as a reporter? in the seemingly eternal hankering for We see and hear what Bly would later describe in her 1887 articles for the New news and the reassuring penumbra of York World. Here are the women tied together at the waist like a prison work gang the First Amendment, as well as in the or forced to sit all day on straight-back wooden benches; the unfeeling attendants new idea ofthe "citizen journalist." laughing at their charges and confiscating Bly's notebook; a well-spoken inmate Some ofthe museum's optimism is no who attests to her sanity, but may well be driven mad by the asylum regime. doubt embedded in its very genes. The After pushing away a plate of inedible food and submitting to an icy bath, Bly Newseum's president, Peter S. Prichard, is thrust back into her tiny cell. A rat scurries across the floor and leaps into bed is the former editor-in-chief of l/iSA To- beside her. Horrified, she flicks it in our direction. Yikes! Fur seems to brush the day, a notable success stor>' and a publi- backs of our legs. How on earth, we wonder, did they do that? cation known both for its bright graphics It would probably be unfair to suggest that this frightening intimacy with a and generally rosy outlook. The muse- rodent is the emotional highlight ofthe Newseum experience. But it is certainly um's founding partners, whose names among this new institution's most memorable thrills. More than six years in adorn many of its fourteen galleries and the making, this $450 million, 2 50,000-square-foot behemoth bills itself as "the fifteen theaters, include the remaining world's most interactive museum"—a whiz-bang homage to a profession still wres- titans of the industry: The New York tling with the perils and promise of new media. As old-line journalism flounders, Times (in tandem with its ruling dynasty, the Newseum salutes its past. But does it also augur its future? the Ochs-Sulzberger Family), Rupert At the least, this ambitious expansion of the first Newseum (in Arlington, Murdoch's , Cox En- Virginia) mostly delivers on its technological boasts, of which the movie I-Witness: terprises, Hearst Corporation, ABC and A 4-D Time Travel Adventure is perhaps the most vivid exemplar. According to NBC News, Time Warner, and so on. The the narrator, the film's aim is to help us merge with "the digital news stream," museum does mention the implosion of which floats toward us in bubbles framing historical scenes. With the help of 3-D Knight Ridder and the uncertain future glasses, the movie takes us not just to the asylum, but to the front lines ofthe Battle ofthe industry. But this is not the place of Lexington with the Revolutionary War correspondent Isaiah Thomas, and to to find a systemic critique ofthe corpo- the rooftops of London with Edward R. Murrow, whose live broadcasts during rate short-sightedness and managerial Nazi air raids make radio history. As war rages, our seats shake, immersing us in ineptitude that have led to what we re- the fray. At once sensationalistic and celebratory, the film underlines one ofthe porters call the "death spiral." museum's central tropes: the journalist as hero. The Freedom Forum itself is the god- Theme-park dazzle will surely be integral to the Newseum's bid to lure tourists child of an archetypal media chain. It was (at $20 a head) from the nearby . Given the prevalence established in 19'il by former Gannett of cynicism about the news media, how the public will respond to the museum's Company chairman Allen H. Neuharth

COLUMBIA J0URNALt5M REVIEW S3 as the successor to the Gannett Founda- interior are "black box" spaces where Charlie, as well as the master control tion. It no longer has any financial link more detailed exhibitions, including the room that serves as the museum's nerve to Gannett, a corporation both envied News Historj' Galleiy, are housed. center. Smaller side elevators, ramps, and despised within the industry for its The notion of glass walls as sym- and stairways allow movement between high profit margins and mostly mediocre bols of democratic transparency is not floors. From multiple vantage points, newspapers. Today, the Freedom Forum new. The British architect Norman Fos- visitors can read engi'aved quotations describes itself as "a nonpartisan founda- ter employed it in the rotunda he con- trumpeting the importance of journal- tion dedicated to free press, free speech structed for the German Reichstag in ism, journalists, and a free press. "Let the and fi'ee spirit for all people," whose fo- Berlin, where the historical symbolism people know the facts," declares Presi- cus includes the Newseum, the First had a dark edge. The Newseum's see- dent Abraham Lincoln, himself the ob- Amendment, and newsroom diversity. through façade has a functional aspect, ject of considerable press vituperation, Not surprisingly, the Newseum, permitting glimpses from the street of a "and the country will be safe." which opened April 11, places the First giant LED screen in the lobby atrium. Amendment front and center in its nar- During a mid-March visit (when rative, with a Five Freedoms Walkway the exhibits were about 80 percent THE MUSEUM'S INTRICATE LAYOUT and First Amendment Gallery. The complete), the forty-by-twenty-two- and spatial metaphors embody the gallery explains some of the legal chal- foot screen was televising Democratic architect's latest collaboration with lenges that have alternately curtailed presidential contender Barack Obama's Ralph Appelhaum Associates, a lead- and expanded the amendment's reach, speech on race in America. A small rapt ing New York-based exhibition design from the Jehovah's Witnesses cases that crowd of Newseum employees and pre- firm. Ralph Appelbauni first gained na- tested the limits of religious freedom view tour groups had gathered in the tional prominence in 1993 for his emo- to recent struggles involving outspoken lobby and on the walkways above to tionally powerful use of design at the high school students and newspapers. watch what seemed like history in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in "Free speech not only lives, it rocks!" making. With two television studios Washington, which served as a model Oprah Winfrey tells us on the gallery and another "Big Screen" video news for a whole generation of history mu- walls, and LL Cool J seconds the emo- wall, the Newseum could well evolve seums. Since then, he has worked with tion in a film. into a communal gathering place at epic Polshek on the Rose Center for Earth moments—much like 's Lest we miss the point, the First and Space at the American Museum of National Constitution Center, where Amendment also is engraved in marble Natural History in New York and the Obama gave his speech and frequent on the museum's William Jefferson Clinton Presidential political debates are held. façade, an architectural tic that at least Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. one critic has dismissed as too literal. The museum's location, at the in- Appelbaum also designed the first, But it is indisputably eye-catching, and tersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and more modest Newseum, which opened it immediately identifies the museum's Sixth Street, is also symbolically reso- in 1997 and closed in 2002 afrer welcom- purpose to passersby, many of whom nant. Its wraparound terraces offer ing more than 2.25 million visitors to its linger to read the ever-changing dis- spectacular views of the National Gal- interactive exhibits and memorial park. play of newspaper front pages that line lery of Art, Smithsonian museums, the Susan Bennett, the Newseum's deputy its entrance. National Archives, and the U.S. Capitol, director and vice president for market- According to Prichard, the design- which serves as a broadcast backdrop ing, notes that the original "starter mu- ers of the museum were charged with and a reminder of the press's guardian seum" was an invaluable planning aid. creating "an iconic building... that re- role. On the sixth-floor terrace, an ex- "We had fiveyear s of practice where we fiected the mission of the press." In re- hibit details the history of Pennsylvania got a chance to ohserve people and see sponse, Polshek Partnership Architects Avenue—the site of presidential inaugu- how they reacted," says Bennett. "One of New York constructed a boxy, seven- ral parades, funeral processions, mass of the mantras was that we didn't want story structure that evokes a giant tele- protests, and Newspaper Row, where to improve ourselves into failure. We vision set or a computer monitor with out-of-town correspondents once plied wanted to take the things that worked a recessed screen. their trade. (Not coincidentally, their of- there and make it bigger and better." But the firm itself prefers a different fices were situated next to another jour- Many features of the Washington New- metaphor. Architect Robert Young, one of nalistic institution: Rum Row.) seum—a display of Pulitzer Prize-win- the lead designers on the project, likens The Newseum's most striking interior ning photographs, a video wall, a chron- the building to the pages of a newspaper. space is the atrium, where visitors can ological survey of news history, and the Polshek's version of the front page is a gaze overhead at a news helicopter and interactive newsroom, among others- glass-curtain wall—a "window on the a replica of the satellite that sent the first debuted in Arlington. Others, such as a world"—that represents the transpar- television signal across the continent. As World News Gallery that salutes jour- ency provided by a free press. Behind it they ride three massive hydraulic eleva- nalistic heroism abroad, fill in perceived are exhibits, including a Journalists Me- tors between the concourse and sixth gaps in the museum's storyline. morial and a 9/11 Gallery, that are bathed levels, they can survey a concrete guard The designer makes sweeping claims in diffuse natural light. In the museum's tower from near Berlin's Checkpoint for this Newseum, which he insists is

54 MAY/JUNE 2008 Power of the pen The Newseum credits the free flow of information, via the press, for toppling the .

not simply an interactive museum of As befits a media museum, the New- ing to read long labels—a reasonable journalism and news. "What it really is," seum does employ a wide range of tech- compromise between old and new. At says Appelbaum, "is a historj' museum niques, from interactive games to the tra- tbe same time, tbe museum caters to of the evolution of the American mind. ditional juxtaposition of artifacts with those who prefer to absorb information It defines bow we created our moral wall texts. At its best, it weds cutting- in visual and aural formats. That means compass, [and] how we've come to think edge technology to rich content. In the that films are shown not just in theaters about our political histor>'. It is a catalog Great Books Gallery, for example, rare but in the middle of galleries, flooding of American thought." volumes and documents relating to the exhibits with ambient sound. (You'll Appelbaum is unquestionably one , sucb as Thomas find few earphones and no audio tours, of the great theorists of contemporary Aquinas's5umni£i Theohgica and a 1787 a mixed blessing.) museum design. But some of his firm's pamphlet-printing of the US. Constitu- In this age of multitasking, iPods, recent work, including the Clinton li- tion, are readable on interactive monitors and private cell-phone conversations braiy and the National Constitutional that allow visitors to turn digital pages. in public places, tbe audio overload may Center, has struck me as overwrought: An Ethics Table in the Interactive not cause universal annoyance. But I too wordy, noisy, and dense. This may Newsroom is also state of the art, re- found it frustrating to try to read The not be entirely bis fault. Exhibition de- sponding to gesture and touch as teams New York Herald's storied account of signers are perpetually warring with compete to answer questions about what the 1912 Titanic disaster wbile, behind curators, who generally want more news is, in fact, fit to print. Each correct me, Dan Aykroyd kept referring to his content and don't understand how an- answer adds a story or photograph to a Saturday Night Live nemesis as "Jane, tiquated "book on the wall" exhibits can digital fí'ont page. In the Internet, TV, you ignorant slut." seem, especially when texts overwhelm and Radio Gallery, viewers can move the artifacts and images on display. (Ben- digitally tbrough a fascinating library nett says that the journalists on the New- of historic radio and television clips, in- so HOW EXACTLY WILL VISITORS EX- seum's staff did learn to write shorter.) cluding pop-culture highlights like the perience this multimedia shrine? Tbe There's also tbe constant pressure to Beatles' ecstatic 1964 U.S. tour. overall design concept for the Newseum, appeal to every kind of visitor: the old As he did at the information-rich Appelbaum told me, is analogous to "a and the young, the "strollers" and the (and wildly boosterish) Clinton library, Sunday newspaper at the extreme." It's "streakers," dedicated readers and theme- Appelbaum uses textual highlighting to at once linear and nonlinear, with visi- park aficionados. provide summaries for visitors unwill- tors able to dip into galleries according

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW 55 to their interests. In fact, only the most to see them, an old-fashioned sort of in- masochistic or stoic should attempt to teractivity designed to shield these rari- see the whole place in a single visit. ties from light. Visitors enter through the Great Hall Along the sides of the gallery, the exhi- of News, where the day's headlines rush bition delves more deeply into the trans- by on an electronic zipper. After that formation of newsgathering and dis- prologue, the main narrative begins on semination. One video plays Watergate the concourse level with an orientation highlights; another discusses women's film. What's News, an elegant montage battles against discrimination (as thougli of still photos and video whose themes they've been won); a third shows the are taken up later in the Early News gradual merger of news and entertain- Galler>'. After a quick look at a satellite ment, from iÍowíin£tMaríín'sLíiu¿r/i-ín truck and an exhibition on the Berlin to Stephen Colbert. Interactive stations Wall—which credits the free flow of in- feature games and biographies of major formation for the wall's demise—visitors figures in the field, and five small the- proceed to the sixth flooran d work their aters show films on such subjects as the way downstairs and forward in time. history of newsreels. government cen- sorship in Federal ist-era America, and Along the way, they'll encounter an- the problem of . other Appelbaum signature: the large, "This is an elegantly emotionally charged artifact. Besides Families will likely prefer to spend written work revealing graffiti-covered sections of the Berlin time in the Interactive Newsroom and new wisdom about Wall, the museum boasts an armored its Ethics Center—but not just families. the nature of truth and its fascinating piace Chevrolet truck pocked by bullets and During my visit, members of a Coast in the changing world shrapnel from fighting in the Balkans, Guard tour group took turns wielding of journalism." and the twisted wreckage of a television microphones and reading television antenna salvaged from the North Tower scripts, then delightedly watching their Neil He my. deun. Graihuite School of.loiirniili.'im. of the World Trade Center. In the World own videotaped performances on TV Univprsiiv of California. Berkeley News Galler>', the laptop and passport monitors. Nearby, dozens of interactive of Wall Street Journal correspondent stations offer news quizzes and sophis- , kidnapped and slain while ticated simulations designed to test visi- reporting on terrorism in Pakistan, will tors' skills at photography and reporting. no douht provoke a shiver or two. "Dude, you're a reporter," we're told, in The Newseum's collection includes case encouragement is needed. more than six thousand other artifacts, exclusive of newspapers and photo- graphs. Among those displayed are the THROUGH ALL OF THIS. JOURNALISTS door of the Democratic headquarters come out looking pretty good. One par- penetrated by burglars during the 1972 ticularly moving evocation of journal- Watergate break-in, Ana Marie Cox's se- istic heroism is a film devoted to press quined slippers (worn while she wrote coverage of the 9/11 attacks. Interviews her political blog Wonkette), and a TRS-80 with reporters, cameramen, and pho- FROM THE RadioShack computer, a primitive porta- tographers are intercut with extraordi- PALMER RAIDS ble nicknamed the "Trash-SO" that many narily intimate footage of the collapsing TO THE of us toted to political conventions and Twin Towers. Unlike freelance photog- PATRIOT ACT national disasters in the 1980s. (By the rapher , whose ruined cam- A History of the Fight for time mine broke down, the warehouse eras and charred press card are on dis- Free Speedi in Americo no longer had replacement parts.) play, these journalists survived to bear CHRISTOPHER M. FINAN The News History Galler>'. a sort of witness. They admit to strong emotions, even tears. We see a rare shot of a TV "American history is marred by recurrent museum-within-a-museum, is the home reporter hugging an interview subject. episodes of hate—Red scares, super- of many of these curiosities. At its cen- p.itriotism, fear of soxual expression. ter is a timeline of newspaper history, The message is clear and salutar}': we're Christopher Finan brilliantly paints that focusing mostly (hut not exclusively) not all coolly objective automatons or record, and shows how courageous on the United States. The timeline is celebrity-hounding paparazzi. Americans have fought for freedom." complemented by examples from the Other brave journalists, killed in the —ANTHONY LEWIS, author of extraordinär}' collection of thirt\' thou- line of dut>- or for their work, aro saluted GidePii's Trumpet and Make No Law sand historic newspapers acquired in in the Journalists Memorial. Appelbaum 2001 from Eric C. Garen and Stephen A. acknowledges his debt to Maya Lin, .CON $"I8,OÜ TAPEKBACK I WWW,BEACON.ORG Goldman. Visitors must pull out drawers whose Vietnam Veterans Memorial is

56 MAY/JUNE 2008 echoed by tbis curving wall of smoky white glass, etched witb the names of BOOK REVIEW martyred journalists. Light streams in, illuminating the panels, and benches al- low for contemplation. Interactive kiosks What We Sow provide biographies. And a quote from Hillary Clinton provides the epitaph: The maddening folly of our man-made pension crisis "Tbe women and men of this memorial BY JAMES SUROWIECKl are truly democracy's heroes." There is also a quieter counternar- rative at the Newseum, an acknowledg- ment of our capacitj' for error. Mistakes— the products of human weakness, blind ambition, and perhaps the pressures of tbe twenty-four-bo ur news cycle—are embodied in mentions of fabulists, from Janet Cooke to USA Today's Jack Kelley, as well as tbeir historical forerunners. In a wry move, the restroom walls are adorned with flubbed beadlines from CJR'S "Tbe Lower Case." Here, even natLire's call is a learning opportunity. (A "Lower Case" book, co-published by CJR OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF DECADES, while America Aged: How and the Freedom Forum, will be sold in American companies and American Pension Debts Ruined the Newseum gifr shop.) General Motors, Stopped the state and city governments have NYC 5ubways, Bankrupted Appelbaum says that tbe museum descended into financial purgatory San Diego, and Loom as the must "do justice to [journalists'] pas- just the way, in The Sun Also Rises, Next Financial crisis by Roger Lowenstein sion. So if it works for journalists, then Mike Campbell says he went bankrupt: The Penguin Press I think it's really accomplished its goal." "gradually, and then suddenly." A deadly 288 pages, 525.95 But the Newseum is, in the end, a mu- combination of generous pension and seum for the nonprofessional—which health-care packages and years of pass- may be more apt tban we find comfort- ing the buck has left institutions like General Motors, Ford, and able. After all, as the Newseum itself sug- struggling to fulfill old promises. Companies and governments did an exception- gests, journalism is becoming a profes- ally good job of evading their impending problems for as long as possible. But sion of the amateur, from the growing actuarial realit>' has now caught up with them. And, as Roger Lowenstein dem- army of bloggers to the student who onstrates in his vivid and scathing new book. While America Aged, the havoc that used a cell-phone camera to photograph reality has already wreaked is nothing compared to what's in store. police storming the site of the Virginia Retirement benefits are, at first glance, a somewhat unlikely source of crisis. Tech massacre. Not everyone applauds They are, to begin with, a relatively new innovation—while American Express these trends, of course. One interactive introduced the first corporate pension in 1875, it wasn't until after the Great kiosk asks visitors whether bloggers are Depression tbat pensions became widespread. And in principle, pensions should "important to tbe future of journalism," be relatively simple to pay for: it's no surprise that workers get old, so you can Of tbose previewing the museum, only rougbly calculate bow much you need to set aside every year to pay what you're 50 percent said yes. going to owe. Unfortunately, as Lowenstein shows in engaging detail, in tbeir short Still, in casting journalism as a he- life span, pensions have become a remarkably destabilizing force, metastasizing roic profession, tbe Newseum may be out of control. Corporations have responded with a massive rollback—less tban 20 less intent on pandering to its corporate percent of companies now offer traditional, defined-benefit pensions. But tbey're sponsors than on inculcating visitors still on tbe hook for all their past promises, to the tune of hundreds of billions with their own responsibilit>', as beirs of dollars, while governments have found it essentially impossible to get rid of to a noble tradition. Its message: You, pensions or even to trim them back. too, can cover the news. Maybe you will. So how did this happen? The simple, and true, answer you get from Lowenstein's So pay attention. Be prepared. And for book is that tbe people in charge didn't care enough to stop it, and often actively tbe sake of our democracy, please don't abetted tbe situation. Pensions were an easy way for companies and governments screw it up. CJR to avoid labor unrest while still protecting their bottom lines. As Lowenstein writes: "A sort of devil's bargain is struck, whereby the unions (wbich know tbat pensions are constitutionally guaranteed) push for benefits that are beyond the abilitv' of JULIA M. KLEIN, a former museum critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is a contributing governments to properly fund. The unions get their promises; the politicians get editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. to satisfy a powerful constituency. And by sbortcbanging their pension funds, tbey

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW 57 Copyright of Columbia Journalism Review is the property of Columbia Journalism Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.