WASHINGTON -- You would expect journalists, particularly top editors and publishers attending the ASNE/NAA convention, to think highly of the
Newseum, the $450 million monument to their profession that opened on Pennsylvania Avenue here last week.
Why shouldn't they? The Newseum's thesis is that everything is news -- war and peace, loyalty and betrayal, life and death. The museum offers a tour through the "first rough draft of history" and portrays the journalists who reported those events as selfless heroes, with a few notable exceptions.
The question, of course, is whether people will buy it -- and how much the museum will influence the ways the news media is perceived.
Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, described seeing "ordinary citizens" looking at front pages from around the country posted on the sidewalk outside the museum.
"I'm not real sentimental," Rosenhause said, "but that was a wonderful feeling, just to see people stop and pay attention.
"You keep hearing that nobody cares, newspapers are dying, but those pages were very much alive last night -- and this museum is very alive."
George Stanley, managing editor of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said he was surprised to see a display of
Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles' car -- including the hole from the bomb that killed him in 1976.
"I guess it showed the sacrifice he was willing to make ... He lost his life in a terrible way," Stanley said. "And then other journalists came to his defense (through the
Arizona Project) to continue the work he had started, and to tell everyone, if you think you can stop this, you can't."
Several editors said they were gratified to see the museum shed light on what reporters do and how they do it. Journalists spend so much time telling other people's stories, said Diana Fuentes, editor of the
Laredo Morning Times, but "something I think we have a hard time doing is telling our own story."
"This does a good job telling people: This is what journalists do, this is what they sacrifice, this is why they exist."
See what some visitors learned about journalism at the Newseum by watching the video below.
