Newseum Opens April 11th — Will it Keep Up?

The new Newseum opens April 11th, and its an impressive project in many respects.

It's a striking but tasteful modern building, with the text of the First Amendment inscribed on its front. The location on Pennsylvania Avenue close to the Capitol has a defiant quality that I admire.

As I walked past yesterday, I observed its display along the sidewalk of current front pages from newspapers around the country and world. It's a tribute to the importance and vibrancy of the newsgathering enterprise and free speech. Tourists were gathered along the front of the building taking in the headlines.

But I don't read newspapers. I get my news from a wide array of sources almost entirely online. Sooner or later, I thought as I walked, some state is going to punch a hole in the Newseum's display, as the state will no longer have a newspaper. Soon enough, most people will get their news in new formats - as I do - from sources and in media of all kinds: blogs, email, traditional news outlets' online editions, and so on.

Will the decline of the newspaper mislead people into thinking that our vibrant tradition of newsgathering and reporting is on the wane? It's something to think about.

The "founding partners" of the Newseum are some of the oldest of the old-school establishment media figures. (Good for them, by the way, for supporting this worthy venture.) They and the Newseum's leadership may think that things are changing for the worse when they're changing for the better - when news is all around us, in dozens of different formats, provided by tens of thousands of subject-matter experts and on-scene reporters with true local knowledge.

The Newseum's planned exhibits include room for new media, but by and large they lean toward exalting the newsgathering industry. That industry has had an important role, no question, but I think it is a role that will diminish over time. I hope the Newseum will actively pursue reporting on all the news, not just the news that's fit to print.