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FIRST VOICES The board of Ball State's Friends of Bracken Library met recently to remember First Amendment advocate George Dale, a former Muncie mayor who championed for justice and civility as editor of the Muncie Post-Democrat. <more> -Photo ID law bad for voters More First Thoughts: journalism teacher Tom Gayda speaks out Student journalists scoop professional press
Mile high with the First Amendment... We were north of the Mile High City near the Rocky Mountains. The principals were voluntarily descending—not from the tall peaks but from their position abutting the summit of school hierarchy. When they reached level ground, we could see each other more clearly. And clear sight leads to insight. <more > |
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Little things mean a lot at the Newseum The 45 words of the First Amendment emblazoned on a 74-foot high slab of granite. The crumbled remains of the 360-foot antenna from the ill-fated World Trade Center. Time magazine’s bullet-riddled news truck from Baghdad. Eight three-ton concrete sections of the old Berlin Wall. The Freedom Forum, a private foundation, spent six years to create a spare-no-expense glass and steel tower – a living memorial to journalism – which features 14 main galleries, 15 theaters and 250,000 feet of exhibit space. But some have called it a memorial to newspapers – period. John Podhoretz, writing in Commentary magazine this week, called the Newseum a “mausoleum.” But it caused quite a splash among 10,000 first-day visitors and dozens of journalists and media executives in town in mid-April for national conventions of the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Most avoided the $20-per-person admission price that others will now face as the cherry blossoms fade away. That big price tag is a gamble in a city that features the famously free Smithsonians. “Expensive yes, but I love it, just love it,” says Butch Ward, a former managing editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and now a consultant at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla. “The Newseum gave me goose bumps. It’s all about history, history I remember.” CEO Charles Overby said the Newseum explores 500 years of news history. He said the displays underscore the changing nature of news in a digital world, while focusing on free speech and a free press. The opening comes at a good time for the embattled media, which are undergoing convulsive change. Consumers today seek more news online, buy fewer newspapers and watch less traditional television news. Surveys show interest in the First Amendment and serious news is lagging, as is enlightened discourse in news. We’re left with a gluttonous diet of “YouTube” videos and the daily quips of David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel. The Newseum has copies of the so-called news books of the 1500s, to early print newspapers (with hundreds of famous front pages), to classic Edward R. Murrow. It also has plenty from news satirists such as Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. The fact that the Newseum has given in to the catnip of celebrity is surely a sign of the times. Heralded news organizations such as the Chicago Tribune have halved Washington and foreign news staffs while devoting precious, daily news space to actress Natalie Portman and rapper TI. The Newseum seeks to leaven that diet with the significant. To open, the Freedom Forum was joined by sponsors whose names are splashed on the doors of its galleries and exhibits, including the Knight Foundation, ABC News – and the Pulliam Family – much like companies vie for naming rights to football bowl games. Newseum tourists will remember the glitz – the clever, interactive games, the 40-by-20 foot TV news wall, the “4D” theater with its moving, rumbling seats. But, the details make the Newseum succeed, not the $450 million. The gallery of iconic, Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographs that cement history to the brain. The stories of journalists martyred on the job. The actual cameras and bruised cell phone of the late Bill Biggart, a freelancer who walked and died beneath the disintegrating World Trade Center towers. That’s the Newseum I’ll remember. (Warren Watson, a lifelong journalist, teaches journalism at Ball State, where he directs a First Amendment institute for America’s youth.)
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