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Your first clue that things aren't exactly as advertised at the traveling "Newseum NewsCapade With Al Neuharth" exhibit is that admission is free, but it'll cost you at least $10 to get in. ‘Newseum’ provides
By Burl Burlingame
a glossy look at
the news business
Star-BulletinThat's because the exhibit is set up on the pier next to Battleship Missouri, and the only way to get to it is to buy a $14 or $10 ticket to the Ford Island attraction, via trolley from the USS Bowfin museum.
The trolley runs every 20 minutes or so. After presenting your ticket, you have to hunt for the Newseum -- it squats wharfside, just past the battleship's graceful bow.
It's not easy to get a handle on the Newseum's tentlike structure, but then it's a traveling show, broken down into a couple of moving vans and erected on site like a circus big top. The good stuff is on the inside.
Which brings us to a cards-on-the-table disclaimer: Journalists don't much like to see the "process" of the business examined too closely. Journalism is, after all, part tradecraft and part magic, inchoate from birth and yet requiring expertise accreted like rings on a tree. You either get it or you don't, like art or baseball.Which means we're not likely to be fair judges of the Newseum, which is pitched squarely at the public like a sugar-coated campaign commercial, a warm-and-fuzzy sermon. Journalists generally hate things that make us feel good about ourselves. It makes us suspicious, because that's our nature.
The Newseum is the primary physical presence of the "Freedom Forum," an organization created by Al Neuharth, once the head of Gannett newspapers.
Currently in Arlington, Va., the Newseum will soon take over the last available public-exhibition space in Washington, D.C., beating out the U.S. Army's plans for a national museum inside the Beltway. The "NewsCapade" road-show version is what's landed here in the islands, the last leg of a 50-state tour.
The title is reminiscent of Neuharth's "BusCapade" and "JetCapade" national tours in the '80s, and this exhibition is vintage Neuharth. It's glitzy. It has the highest tech that money can buy. It's shiny and slick as soap on a doorknob, but it's shallow. Imagine this: Listed among the greatest journalism feats of all time is "1982 -- Al Neuharth reinvents newspapers with USA Today."
But some of it is way cool.
The gimme-tech includes a bank of touch-screen computers with nattily designed interactive scenarios. They're chockablock with swirling graphics, crisp, seamless video, well-designed directional icons, and they work well. But the content, the content ...
An example: On the subject of "Risking Lives for Stories," former ABC-News reporter Marlene Sanders looks gravely into the camera and says, simply, "The outside world drops away and you are only there living in that moment and what you are doing." That's it.
I tried a game called "Be an Editor!" in which you have to beat the deadline clock and "confer" with various section editors about which stories to run.
These editors include recognizable newsroom types such as the gruff female sports editor and the swishy male features editor. They all speak to you as if they're Mr. Rogers and it's a wonderful day in the 'hood.
You can score points with an apple-cheeked old coot from a Norman Rockwellish Ames Daily Tribune, by choosing the giant cheese-factory fire as the main story rather than a mutant frog story.
There's a panorama of dull photos called "1999 -- The Year in Pictures," virtually all of which seemed to have been taken by remote control at managed photo ops. The best ones are at the far right, Brandi Chastain whooping and whipping off her shirt as her team won, and the Eiffel Tower ablaze at the 2000 New Year's.
There are a number of artifacts. A Microsoft keyboard autographed by Bill Gates. An antique Remington typewriter. A "Tokyo Rose" microphone that, upon reading the caption, had no apparent connect to the real Iva Toguri. TV correspondent Ike Pappas' jungle booties from Vietnam. Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's lime-green press pass from 1972. A souvenir-sized chunk of the Berlin Wall.
The most powerful artifact is an old-fashioned block of lead type, used to print 700 copies of "Romania" in 1988, a political tract that earned its publishers Romanian jail time.
The notion of freedom of the press and the import of the First Amendment is hammered upon time and again, like a sales pitch.
There's a movie as well, called "What's News?" filled with memorable images, lovingly crafted into a montage, set against soaring gospel harmonies. The lion's share of the short film focuses on war and outer space -- the sexy stuff, image-wise.
The Top 10 Stories of the Century are listed, and No. 3 is the attack on Pearl Harbor, right here in our own back yard.
OK, that was big in the United States, not elsewhere. As a matter of fact, the entire exhibit is America-centric. It's like "news" stops at our borders, unless we leave the country to blow things up. (The No. 1 story is the bombing of Hiroshima.)
But what's this over here?
A bank of famous newspaper front pages, including the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's classic "WAR! Pearl-Harbor attack" issue. The caption notes that the issue was produced in only an hour or so, in the midst of the attack. And it's labled as a prime example of "public-service journalism."
Cool! This exhibit is all right.
On View
What: Newseum's NewsCapade with Al Neuharth
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