The Modern Journalist

Newseum Focuses on Triumphs, Not Failures

I’ve paid scant attention to the Newseum, a $450 million monstrosity that chronicles the history of journalism in the country — at least so far as we’re told.

Newsweek has an insightful piece about the decision to build this during a time when 15,000 jobs have been eliminated in the past decade, newspapers and magazines continue stumbling through the Web and the public has an all-time low approval rating for its practitioners.

The Newseum’s decision to skip over our black eyes — and I’m taking this Newsweek piece as my only source, so let’s all take it with a grain of salt — from yellow journalism to advocacy journalism to fabrication scandals (of which I ended up in the middle of one) is a gigantic mistake. One might say the height of arrogance as journalists are supposed to be the first-draft of history.