E. Coast News Museum Officials Woo L.A.

Journalism leaders gathered in Century City Tuesday to discuss the opening of the Newseum, a $50-million interactive museum of news--the first of its kind in the country--opening in the Washington, D.C.-area April 18.

Directors of the Freedom Forum, a foundation dedicated to a free press, met at the Century Plaza Hotel to announce the upcoming opening of the museum, which is designed to preserve the history of news. Visitors will walk in under a giant metal sphere made out of 1,841 newspaper nameplates--one from each daily paper in the country and hundreds from around the world. Inside, a city block-long news history gallery traces the development of media since the days of Christopher Columbus. Multimedia exhibits allow visitors to play anchor, reporter or editor. Officials chose to meet in Los Angeles as a way to broaden publicity efforts for the new museum.

“There are so many examples of courage, of writing tough stories against the odds,” said Peter Prichard, executive director of the Newseum. “It was kind of thrilling to learn more about this history.”

Exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum, who also created the lauded United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, said the design of the facility reflected the changing and dynamic nature of news itself.

Gathering information from hundreds of news sources and developing the museum took staff and scholars five years. Exhibitions will feature historical objects of news transmission, from bells rung by Chinese emperors 3,000 years ago to the microphone Franklin Roosevelt used to deliver his weekly radio broadcasts. A 126-foot-wide giant video screen features constant broadcasts from 170 news sources and a wall below it showcases 70 front pages from around the world, updated daily.