DC - The Newseum

The Newseum was an AMAZING museum! We only spent about 4 hours there and I would have gladly went back for another day. It is kind of expensive, but it was one of our favorite stops.

The 1st Amendment is engraved onto the outside of the building. The museum is about news and how news is reported so the 1st Amendment is very important. (I'm thinking about having Alex memorize this!)

Around the outside of the building our front pages from each of the 50 states. We were excited that our very own Houston Chronicle was being featured for Texas! And, the main article was about the air show. The Newseum receives front pages from around the WORLD every day! And, you can access these pages online! Today they received 819 front pages from 78 countries! You can also choose to look at just the top 10. I enjoyed today's political comic front page from "Philadelphia Daily News."

One of the main exhibitions was about Hurricane Katrina. Alex really enjoyed this, too, because she lived through it! No, I don't mean through the hurricane, but most 'history' happened before she was born! And, we live in Houston where so many of the survivors/victims of the hurricane were transported. She remembers this event and took her time looking through this exhibit.

This was a sign explaining the markings that were left on the houses. They even had some of the boards off of the houses that were actually marked.

The Newseum has an amazing view of the capitol building. The street in the picture is Pennsylvania Avenue. Some of the networks use this area to film things happening on Pennsylvania Ave.

There are 15 theaters at the Newseum. Most of the films are between 5-15 minutes. We only watched two entire films - this one called "The Power of the Image." It was amazing! And we watched another movie about September 11th.

The September 11th exhibit mainly consisted of the film, this piece of one of the towers (I think I read it was an antenna, but I could be wrong), and a giant wall filled with front page articles about 9/11.

Another area was all about the 1st amendment. It talks about the 5 freedoms of this amendment: assembly, speech, petition, religion and the press. Alex and I enjoyed a computer game which tested your knowledge of the 1st amendment.

The museum also has one of the guard towers from the Berlin Wall. It is 3 stories tall and stood near Checkpoint Charlie. There are also 8 pieces of the Berlin Wall - the largest collection in the U.S. (I believe I actually read it was the largest collection outside of Germany, but I might not be remembering correctly.)

There was also an Elvis exhibition that was really neat. Alex and I watched part of a movie on a huge screen and looked that the exhibit. Neither of us is that interested in Elvis, but it was still fascinating. And, another exhibit I missed that I wanted to see was the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery. So, I think I'll be asking for this book for Christmas!