Located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC, the interactive museum of news and journalism, as we know it the Newseum. The museum is a seven level 250,000 square foot museum, that features 15 theaters and 14 galleries. Displaying the largest display of section of the Berline Wall that is outside Germany the Newseum’s Berling Wall Gallery is quite extensive. The Today’s Font Pages Gallery presents front pages from more than 80 international papers.

Other galleries found at the Newseum include, news history, September 11 attacks, the First Amendment, world press freedom and the history of the TV, radio and internet. The first location opened on April 18th 1997 in Rosslyn, Virginia. In five years, the original Newseum attracted more than 2.25 million visitors. The Newseum’s operations are funded by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to “free press, free speech and free spirit for all people”. The new Newseum, which does charge an admission fee, has become one of Washington’s most popular destinations, and its high definition television studios hosts news broadcasts including ABC’s This Week.

In 2000, Freedom Forum decided to move the Newseum from its location in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River to Washington, D.C. The original Newseum was closed on 3 March 2002, to allow its staff to concentrate on building the new, larger museum. The new museum, built at a cost of $450 million, opened its doors to the public on April 11, 2008.

Tim Russert, a Newseum trustee, said, “The Newseum made a pretty good impression in Arlington, but at your new location on Pennsylvania Avenue, you will make an indelible mark.”

After obtaining a landmark location at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW, the Newseum board selected noted exhibit designer Ralph Appelbaum, who had designed the original Newseum in Arlington, Virginia, and architect James Stewart Polshek, who designed the Rose Center for Earth and Space with Todd Schliemann at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, to work on the new project.

Highlights of the building design unveiled October 2002 include a façade featuring a “window on the world”, 57 ft × 78 ft (17 m × 24 m), which looks out on Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall while letting the public see inside to the visitors and displays. It features the 45 words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, etched into a stone panel facing Pennsylvania Avenue.

One feature carried over from the prior Arlington site was the Journalists Memorial, a glass sculpture which lists the names of 1,900 journalists from around the world killed in the line of duty. It is updated and rededicated every year.