Tuesday, August 20, 2002

'Today's Front Pages' display opens on Pennsylvania Avenue

ARLINGTON, Va. — One of the most popular exhibits from the Newseum is now on display in downtown Washington, D.C., at Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., the future home of the interactive museum of news.

Visitors to the outdoor exhibit can compare that day’s Page One news coverage in newspapers from each of the 50 states and a selection of international newspapers. The exhibit will remain on display until the Newseum opening, which is expected in 2006.

Technicians at the Newseum arrive at their Arlington, Va., offices as early as 4:30 a.m. each day to begin downloading and organizing up to 140 front page submissions sent to the Newseum via the Internet. Sixty-eight front pages are selected — based largely upon geographic distribution — printed on large-format printers at 130% of the original size and then handed off to installers who transport the front pages to the Pennsylvania Avenue site and mount them inside the 92-foot-long aluminum and Plexiglas display. Installation is completed by 8:30 a.m. each day.

As the hard-copy installation takes place on Pennsylvania Avenue, all front page submissions received overnight are posted on the Newseum’s award-winning Web site (www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages). Visitors to the Newseum site can pull up front pages from around the world and, if desired, link to each newspaper’s site.

"The daily front pages exhibit is part of our mission to try to create better-educated news consumers, allowing them to see how major news stories are presented by different newspapers," said Joe Urschel, Newseum executive director and senior vice president.

"Today's Front Pages" is one of two new interactive experiences on the Newseum site. Also new this week is "Running Toward Danger" (www.newseum.org/runningtowarddanger), based upon the recently published book by the Newseum, Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11.

The "Running Toward Danger" site features excerpts from interviews with 16 journalists who covered the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Their accounts are arranged chronologically — beginning with the 8:53 a.m. Associated Press NewsAlert that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center — and are accompanied by radio and television coverage of key moments from September 11 and more than a dozen photographs. The presentation concludes with photographs and audio from an interview with Tom E. Franklin of The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record, who took the photograph of the firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero. The "Running Toward Danger" site also includes a tribute to photojournalist William Biggart, who died covering the collapse of the second tower.

The Newseum, the interactive museum of news being planned for Washington, D.C., is funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people. For more information about the Newseum, visit www.newseum.org.

Media contact: Mike Fetters, Newseum, 703/284-2895