New Newseum worth a trip

The opening date still isn’t set, but the Newseum is shaping up to be a must see for journalists in DC when it finally does open this spring. The “interactive museum of news” on Pennsylvania Ave. will be ten times larger than its predecessor in suburban Virginia, which closed in 2002. I got a quick tour last week, and it’s impressive.

There are tools of the trade (like the Bell Jet Ranger hanging over the lobby and the original Conus satellite newsgathering truck below) and icons of the industry everywhere you look. One new item is a trunk that belonged to Ed Murrow. The Newseum won a bidding war for it by correctly answering the seller’s question: what was Murrow’s real name?

More recent news is remembered too. The Virginia Tech student’s cell phone, which captured video and sound during the 2007 shootings, will be on display. So will an antenna that came down intact from the top of the World Trade Center during the terrorist attack in 2001. And the body armor ABC’s Bob Woodruff was wearing when he was wounded in Iraq.

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