On Tuesday, I found myself waking up and deciding to take advantage of a gorgeous day in Washington DC. Why work when I don’t have to be anywhere until 2:00 and I can always play ‘catch up’ on the plane?
I decided to check out the Newseum. The Newseum is a 6-story modern building on Pennsylvania Avenue dedicated to media and news. It was a fascinating experience starting with the history of the media in the US and its sometimes tenuous relationship with government. The museum brings you through many emotions. Laughter at satirically presented newscasts (Daily Show, SNL) to how the media represented 9-11.

One interactive room had a large circular table in the middle of it. You were supposed to manipulate it by dragging walking figures on a table top screen to your circle in front of you. Immediately a message would share a scenario with you in which you needed to use ‘ethics’ to make your decision. For example, “Your reporter tells you that they will be ‘out in the field’ to report a story that day. Instead, you find out the reporter was at home using the internet to piece together the story from other articles. What do you do?”

There were exhibits on comics in the news, political cartoons, the Berlin Wall, NASA, women in the media, Watergate, reporters who have died during war, during kidnapping. Famous photojournalists and their photos. It goes on and on.

The museum was pretty empty which was nice to have space and time to walk around in a leisurely way. I watched sobering eleven minute video on 9-11 and my eyes recently dried from sad tears looked up to see someone vaguely familiar. I looked away and looked again wondering why this person had sunglasses on in a museum. Then, I realized… Kevin Bacon. As we perused the museum together but separate, I couldn’t help but think about the irony of being a famous person surrounded by media. Respecting his privacy and time, I also wondered if he took his sunglasses off if I would have even noticed it was someone trying to disguise themselves…