By — Danny Kistner

The Newseum is finally closing after eleven long years of attempting to fulfill its mission of informing the American public to their right of free speech. After having struggled financially for a number of years—mostly due to the fact that it’s located on the historic Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., one of the most expensive areas in the city—the Newseum’s founding organization Freedom Forum has decided to shut it down. They will be selling it to John Hopkins University and the building will be renovated and then used as a part of the university’s D.C. campus. 

Consisting of 15 galleries and theaters spread across seven levels, the Newseum houses the largest sections of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery, and a number of other relics of a past both recent and far away. The artifacts of the Newseum will be moved to a support center where they will receive proper storage and care, as to ensure they survive well on into the future. 

To some, the Newseum was a waste of money, holding in it only “journalistic gimcracks” that serve no purpose but to glorify the media. To many more, however, the Newseum will be sorely missed, as has been expressed on social media, their website, and by a number of other journalists themselves. Its facade was a testimony to its mission, brick carved with the words of the First Amendment and facing our capital, but this doesn’t mean this message will go to waste.

It’s hard to say goodbye to the Newseum, writes Bernard Melekian https://t.co/cQDBwHfGeI

— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) November 10, 2019

Journalism is well alive and all around us. Perhaps it’s for the best that it can’t all be put in one building and called just one thing. 

Read more here.