Anabel Lee reviews the Newseum:
The Newseum, though, despite its futuristic architecture and flashy digital videos, doesn't quite feel like it's even caught up with the 21st century. Recently relocated from its original home in Arlington, Virginia, to Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C., the museum houses more than 6,000 journalistic artifacts and excels at informing visitors which medium covered which stories best (or most famously). But it fails to tell us how we got from point A to point B, from the country's first partisan newspapers to the World Wide Web. It fails to show how journalism has evolved. And by fetishizing newspaper relics and touching on major developments like new media in only a cursory manner, the Newseum unwittingly declares the death of the newspaper. It is at best a poorly executed history museum and at worst a news mausoleum that will, at the very least, provide a beautiful resting place for that final newspaper 35 years from now.
And Brian Beutler looks at efforts to get Iranians and Americans to talk:
"The main idea is that if more people in this country have friends in Iran the two countries are less likely to go to war," explained Nick Jehlen, co-founder of Enough Fear. "It's as simple as that." The event, called "Time to Talk to Iran", was Jehlen's brainchild.
Jehlen invited every member of Congress to attend this week's event, but only five, all from the House of Representatives, participated: Lynne Woolsey and Barbara Lee, both California Democrats, joined Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas. All are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Woolsey and Lee co-chair. Ron Paul, the Republican presidential contender from of Texas, crossed the aisle to appear with the congresswomen.
Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they're published.
--The Editors
