The Newseum in Washington DC is well worth a visit
When the US government shut down in October 2013, the world was concerned about the international impact on finances, the stability of arguably the most powerful nation on the planet and if terrorists might seize the opportunity to strike. Personally, I was pretty put out that I couldn’t visit the Air and Space Museum.
I was in Washington DC for a holiday with a friend and had planned a rigorous tour of the world-famous museums and historical sites, all of which were closed for some seemingly petty political squabble. All closed, that is, except the Newseum. I’d never heard of it, but there seemed little else left to occupy us on that stormy Wednesday afternoon, so we headed there with only mild interest.
Despite the crowds of tourists and busloads of hastily re-hashed school trips, the Newseum proved well worth a visit. Packed with exhibits about ‘news’ in a variety of mediums – including the World Trade Center’s contorted broadcast antenna, slabs of The Berlin Wall and a fascinating catalogue of historically poignant newspapers – the designers have clearly gone to extraordinary lengths to make the news real for its visitors. There are games, interactive displays, a section on spies and the opportunity to ‘have a go’ at reading the news in front of the camera (cheesy but good fun).
We spent several hours exploring the multi-levelled Newseum, consistently entertained by the different displays we discovered, only skipping on the JFK exhibition (purely because it was far too busy with US visitors paying their respects). Perhaps my least favourite exhibition was the gallery of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs (see Is Photo Journalism Immoral? blog) which left me feeling uneasy at the morals of some journalism and questioning the practise as a whole, but even this gave fascinating insight into the news that I had not properly explored before.
I left with tired legs but by no means bitter that I had been forced to sacrifice air and space discovery for an afternoon of news. If you find yourself in Washington DC, I’d definitely recommend paying the Newseum a visit, even if the government are behaving themselves and successfully running the country at the time.
Leave a Reply