Newseum

The Newseum might be my all time favorite museum, ever, but I might be biased. This museum needs a whole day, at least. Luckily, your tickets are good for two days!

Six floors (and three gift shops) and interactive and interesting exhibits ranging from the history of news making to what countries have the most freedom of the press, be a news anchor man, and so much more!

Every guidebook, pamphlet, video, tour guide, museum worker, and yes, even this blogger, will recommend you start on the bottom most floor with the introduction video. I know this sounds silly but with six floors of exhibits, you better know what you’re getting yourself into. Then take the elevator to the sixth floor and then work your way back down (seriously, don’t try it the other way, your only option then is stairs – phew!)

On the bottom floor there, around the corner from the intro video, are a few pieces of the Berlin Wall. Yup. The Berlin Wall. There is also a small piece that is on a pedestal that you can touch (the bigger wall segments are hands off).

On this floor is also the 4D show looking at the importance and growth of the news as well as the museum’s traveling exhibit.

My favorite exhibit was the history of the news. I know it sounds silly, but being in one room where you can see everything from a typewriter and old, old copies or newspapers to the “On Notice Board” from the Colbert Report, and everything in between was magical. (Yup, go ahead and say it, I’m a news dork.)

The other really neat exhibit, which I wasn’t expecting at all, was the radio antenna from atop the World Trade Center in New York. It was pulled from the rubble after the towers fell and brought to the museum.

The antenna itself will move you. The exhibit around it: much more so.

Around the antenna is a timeline of what happened and how it was being reported, with pictures. Many of them iconic (I hate that word in this case, but that’s what it is) have been shown over and over, but some of these haven’t been seen since that fateful day.