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Washington’s Newseum nears final deadline amid crisis in US journalism | Media


“Joke’s on you, journalists. The only thing that ends up in museums is when there’s no use for them any more. The air and space museum is a perfect example. Once we landed on the moon, the space race was over. We may as well have Scotchgarded Neil Armstrong and hung him from the ceiling. And so, the construction of this museum fittingly marks the end of the news.”

These were the words of comedian Stephen Colbert in a video message recorded for the grand opening of the Newseum in Washington in 2008. The museum was hailed as a $450m cathedral of journalism, boasting 15 galleries and 15 theatres over seven floors at one of the world’s most exclusive addresses between the White House and US Capitol.

But Colbert’s jokey monologue was prophetic. The debt-ridden Newseum is nearing its final deadline. At the end of this month it will shut its doors for the last time, becoming a glass and steel white elephant – and an almost-too-obvious metaphor for the crisis facing America’s newspaper industry.

The museum opened with fanfare on Pennsylvania Avenue 11 years ago after moving from Arlington, Virginia. It was both a treasure trove and something of a grab bag. Star exhibits include myriad historic newspapers, a section of undersea telegraph cable from the 1860s, microphones used by former president Franklin Roosevelt for his “fireside chats”, a steel door from the Watergate break-in, broadcaster Tim Russert’s 2000 presidential election whiteboard (“Florida! Florida! Florida!”), a section of the 360ft antenna mast from the World Trade Center destroyed on 11 September 2001, Pulitzer prize-winning photography and a memorial to 2,344 journalists who died reporting the news.

There were also temporary exhibitions, lectures, thousands of classes and programmes, a display of today’s front pages (which will survive posthumously in digital form) and some charming touches including newspaper misprints embedded in tiles in the public toilets. For example: “Collene Campbell champions the rights of murder victims after being one herself more than once. (The Orange County Register, 9/30/01)”

It chalked up 10 million visitors and, for some journalists, was a place of pilgrimage and inspiration. Ethan Millman, based in Los Angeles, tweeted: “I visited the newseum as a 17-year-old, unsure if I wanted to pursue a career in such a turbulent, unpredictable industry. The Newseum captured everything journalism stands for and left me with no doubt I needed to be a reporter. It’ll be missed.”

But for others, the Newseum was a vanity project that rambled beyond its brief. Artifacts included 12ft-high concrete sections of the Berlin Wall beside an East German watchtower and an exhibit about US presidents’ pet dogs. There was a danger of filling the cavernous halls of 250,000 square feet with an eccentric collection of curios and ephemera.

And financial headaches were compounded by a hefty admission fee. Some may have balked at paying $24.95 plus tax when they could cross the street to the National Archives, housing the US constitution and declaration of independence, or the National Gallery of Art, with the only Leonardo da Vinci painting in North America, and visit free of charge. The same goes for numerous Smithsonian Institution museums in the area.

The Berlin Wall gallery at the Newseum.



The Berlin Wall gallery at the Newseum. Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/Reuters

Speaking at the Newseum’s last public event, its chairman, Peter Prichard, admitted he and other founders had overreached. “We thought big,” he told the audience. “We wanted to make an impact and so this was a very ambitious, visionary project. Unfortunately, it also turned out to be very expensive, too expensive over time for its main funder, the Freedom Forum, to operate.”

Despite spending more than half a billion dollars from the Freedom Forum and nearly $150m raised from donors, Pritchard continued, the Newseum never broke even. Its smallest annual operating deficit was in the $7m range and the biggest more than $30m. The losses proved unsustainable and the building was sold to Johns Hopkins University for $372.5m.

There were other trends at work. Prichard said: “The development of this museum coincided with the digital hurricane that swept over old school traditional media. Newspapers large and small were decimated, fairness and objectivity in news reporting deteriorated or in some cases disappeared, and some politicians found that blaming journalists was an attractive political vein to mine. So the traditional media, a natural base of support for the Newseum, was left economically weakened and held in low regard by the public.”

The digital hurricane assailing US media shows no sign of abating. Losing the News: The Decimation of Local News and the Search for Solutions, a recent report by the nonproft organisation PEN America, found that newspapers have lost more than $35bn in advertising revenue and 47% of newsroom staff over the past 15 years. Over 1,800 newspapers have closed, leaving more than 3m people with no newspaper at all, and more than at least a thousand have become “ghost newspapers,” with little original reporting.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to attack the media as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” in a concerted effort to undermine public trust and splinter old certainties about truth and information. The Newseum’s giant marble tablet bearing the 45 words of the first amendment is a short walk from the Trump International Hotel.

Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America, said: “The timing just couldn’t be worse in that we just published a report that’s about the crisis in local news across the country and the decimation of local newsrooms. In that sense, the news is withering away at the local level and then we’re also amidst a period of unprecedented attacks on the news media, journalism, facts and truth from the highest levels of the US government.”

The Newseum still hopes to find a new, downsized home in the Washington area. Nossel, who has visited often, added: “It just feels like an emblem of these troubled times when truth is kind of hanging in the balance we’re actually more dependent on credible news than ever before.”

Among this year’s media casualties were Laura Bassett and John Stanton, who were laid off by HuffPost and BuzzFeed respectively and joined forces to create the Save Journalism Project. Stanton, 45, who describes himself as a “third generation newsman”, said the timing of the Newseum’s shutdown is “terrifying”.

He added: “It’s right at the time when we’re having all these layoffs. This year something like 7,700 journalists have lost their jobs in the US and it is kind of apropos, I suppose, that the museum dedicated to our profession is going under. ”

The crisis has reached into every corner of the industry, Stanton said. “If you go into a lot of urban areas, a lot of black communities used to be served by black newspapers but those have collapsed. Spanish language communities, the same thing: they are losing their newspapers and their online news outlets. The danger can’t be over overstated. I think mostly we focus on the national, which is obviously very important, especially given Donald Trump being president and all what he does, but even at a very personal, local level, losing these is so bad for us.”





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