Friday, March 29, AD 2024 7:52am

Newseum Now Oldseum

 

Ah formerly ink stained wretches of the Fourth Estate, the public definitely does not love you:

 

After 11 years of hemorrhaging money, the Baltimore Sun on Friday announced that the Newseum, a 250,000 square foot temple dedicated to journalists by journalists, will close.

The Sun reported that the $500 million building will shut down at the end of 2019, finally ending the saga of a Washington D.C. museum that was always in debt and had five chief executives in the last nine years. In 2017, the Washington Post announced it was on “death watch” after a “stunning decline.” 

One thing that didn’t help the Newseum is the expensive ticket prices. It costs $21 for adults (down from a high of $25) and almost $13 for children. In a city of free museums, this isn’t exactly enticing. 

Over the years, NewsBusters has reported on the problems with the self-indulgent shrine to journalism. In 2008, The MRC’s Kyle Drennen noted that “the exhibit on journalistic ethics took up less space in the seven floor building than the gift shop.” 

In 2009, I toured the museum and found that the Newseum downplayed bias and derided the “advocacy journalism” of conservative talk radio. One section read: 

 

Go here to read the rest.  Journalism, at least as practiced by the mainstream media, is on a glide path to the La Brea tar pits.

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Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Saturday, January 26, AD 2019 8:33am

Oh that’s so sweet…my day was made when I read this; “..the exhibit on journalistic ethics took up less space in the seven floor building than the gift shop.”

No crap! Who would of thunk it?

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, January 26, AD 2019 9:52am

Wait, 11 years?

I went to the Newseum in either ’98 or ’99. Was mostly a couple of pictures, a piece of the Berlin Wall, some (deliberate) graffiti and a really pretty, impressive memorial to reporters who had died. I remember being a little suspicious, and I was not really aware of Paliwood at the time.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 26, AD 2019 11:50am

Wait, 11 years?

Its current building was opened in 2008. It’s had several others.

Pity for those losing their jobs (some of the management excepted). Over the years, I’ve made the acquaintance of people who’ve worked for one of those five directors and others who had done work for his wife. His tenure at the Newseum took a chunk out of his reputation. And I bet he earned that injury.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, January 26, AD 2019 12:32pm

+1

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, January 26, AD 2019 12:55pm

You can take this to the bank. Every single thing you hear, read or see from the media is propaganda. And, 88% of everything they throw at the kiddies in school is false. .

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Sunday, January 27, AD 2019 3:40am

Too bad Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) famed columnist of the Baltimore Sun was not around to write the obituary of the Newseum. He would have had choice words about the decline of journalism to Liberal propaganda and P.R.
Here’s a quote:
” American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant.”
H. L. Mencken

Clinton
Clinton
Sunday, January 27, AD 2019 11:49am

Back in 1972, Gallup began tracking Americans’ confidence in
our press. Trust in the press peaked in 1976, with 72% reporting
a high degree in confidence in our journalists, no doubt because
of the widely-lauded coverage of Watergate and the Vietnam War.

By 2007, that overwhelmingly positive regard had eroded to the
point where for the first time the majority of Americans responded that they did not have a high degree of confidence in our
news media.

In 2016, just 32% of Americans surveyed reported having a high
degree of confidence in our news media– in forty years, trust
in American journalism had so evaporated that it had almost
exactly become the reverse image of what it was in ’76. When
confidence is correlated with political affiliation, it turns out that
even Democrats don’t believe what our press says: only 51%
of Democrats report having confidence in the MSM. (Among
Independents, that figure drops to 30%, and among Republicans,
just 14%).

I know of no one in the propagandatainment industry that has
spoken out about this erosion of their industry’s credibility in
any meaningful way. Like our bishops, the leaders of our
nation’s press appear to be content to coast as the institutions
in their charge decline into increasing irrelevance and disrepute.

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