Read all about it! Newseum opening today
Chris Lefkow

WASHINGTON—Hold the front page! There’s a new museum in the US capital, the Newseum, a shrine to journalism which traces the history of news from the first scribblings on clay to the digital age. The glitzy new attraction on the Washington tourist trail, built at a cost of 450 million dollars, bills itself as the “World’s Most Interactive Museum” and opens its doors to the public this week.
It features thousands of historic newspaper front pages, iconic news photos, hundreds of hours of film, artifacts and interactive games in 14 galleries, 15 theatres and two television studios. It’s the brainchild of USA Today newspaper founder Al Neuharth’s Freedom Foundation, a non-profit group which Newseum executive director Joe Urschel described as “dedicated to free speech, free press and free spirit.” Emblazoned in giant letters in marble on the facade of the building are the 45 words of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and its admonition to Congress to make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
“The Newseum is a museum that looks at the importance of news and the importance of a free press in a free society,” Urschel told reporters during a preview tour ahead of the April 11 opening. More than 10 years in the making, the Newseum (www.newseum.org) is located on Pennsylvania Avenue, half-way between the White House and the US Capitol. A KXAS-TV news helicopter and a communications satellite hover over the high-ceilinged atrium, the Great Hall of News, which features a giant video screen and glass elevators shuttling between the museum’s seven floors.
Visitors can travel back in time to learn about the landmark 15th-century invention of the printing press or examine the oldest item in the collection, a 3,262-year-old clay brick with Cuneiform writing. A News History Gallery displays more than 350 historic newspaper front pages under glass, a fraction of the 35,000 in the collection going back 500 years. They include the Baltimore News Post of September 1, 1939 announcing the start of World War II (“Hitler Attacks Poles”) and the Los Angeles Times of August 15, 1945 announcing its end, a simple boldface “Peace.”