D.C.’s New Newseum: The Inside Scoop - 2

Interactive Experiences, 4-D Adventures

“I also liked the newscasting,” Kate said of her stint in the “Be a TV Reporter” area of the Interactive Newsroom. Was she nervous? “I felt really excited and happy.”

Becky said she will share the newscast with relatives and friends once she downloads it. Note: This optional experience involves the Newseum’s only surcharge, $8.

Overall, she pronounced the Newseum as “very, very well done. It’s laid out well and easy to follow.”

Suzanne Fenzel and her daughters, Anna, 10, and Erin, 7, walked from their Capitol Hill home to the Newseum and spent several hours seeing a good portion of it.

Suzanne, who once served in the U.S. military in Germany, found the Berlin Wall Gallery “very moving.” It explains how broadcasts from free West Berlin into communist East Berlin helped bring down the barrier that divided the city from August 1961 until November 1989. The exhibit features eight sections of the wall—the most outside of Germany—and a three-story-tall East German guard tower that once stood near the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing.

Elsewhere in the Interactive Newsroom, touch-screen stations simulate the experience of covering a story as a reporter or photographer. An Ethics Center presents the kinds of difficult choices journalists face on the job.

• Interactive exhibits at the Newseum help to keep young visitors engaged and interested.
• Maurice Fliess

Suzanne and her daughters said they also enjoyed the “4-D Time Travel Adventure” that spotlights several instances of powerful news reporting. However, of the Second World War segment in which an actor portraying Edward R. Murrow broadcasts from a London rooftop as German bombs fall—and the theater seats shake from the percussion—Anna said, “It was scary.”

Erin, meanwhile, said she didn’t like an especially “creepy part” of another segment showing how 19th century reporter Nellie Bly infiltrated an insane asylum. In that scene, as a rat races across the screen, audience members feel a gust of air hit their ankles.

David Foster, 11, of Linthicum, Md., said he enjoyed the film’s three-dimensional visual effects, such as a sword that comes toward the audience during the segment on how Isaiah Thomas covered the Battle of Lexington in 1775. Seeing the Revolutionary War engagement re-enacted was timely because “I learned about that in school a few months ago.”

Digital news is not overlooked in the technologically advanced Newseum, nor is journalism’s all-too-frequent tendency to lapse into sensationalism, unfairness—or worse. The Newseum also demonstrates a sense of humor, with video clips from the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, a large Bart Simpson writing “The First Amendment Does Not Cover Burping” on the blackboard and printed goofs of hilarious proportions adorning the walls of the rest rooms, such as the headline, “Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge.”

One final point: Wear comfortable shoes. The exhibit space covers 250,000 square feet—more than triple the amount of an earlier Newseum that the Freedom Forum operated on the Virginia side of the Potomac River between 1997-2002. The suggested path through the 14 major galleries is 1.5 miles long.

Maurice Fliess worked for the Freedom Forum and Newseum from 1992 through 2001 and now is a member of the Newseum Advisory Committee.