Newseum takes another step into the future

The building is far from finished, but Newseum curators have installed their first artifact -- an item so big they’ll put up the rest of the museum around it.

The world’s first news satellite truck was gingerly lowered by a crane this week into what will be the new home of the museum dedicated to journalism and the 1st Amendment.

The Conus 1 satellite truck helped transform local television news in 1984 by allowing stations to cover national stories without depending on the major networks, said Newseum curator Carrie Christoffersen.

Hubbard Broadcasting and Conus Communications used the first satellite truck. Four years later, at the 1988 presidential nominating conventions, dozens of stations used similar equipment.

The truck eventually will be in one of the first exhibits Newseum visitors will see, along with a CNN video satellite phone and a pre-Civil War photo wagon that allowed photographers to develop pictures in the field, Christoffersen said.

The original Newseum, in Arlington, Va., was open from 1997 to 2002. It closed when officials at its parent organization, the Freedom Forum, decided to build a new facility on Pennsylvania Avenue near the U.S. Capitol. The $400-million complex is scheduled to open in fall 2007.

Multimedia exhibits, theaters and a broadcast studio will fill seven levels, giving the museum about three times as much space as it had previously.

“The old favorites, like the old newspapers and interactive newsroom, are all coming back and will be expanded,” Newseum spokesman Michael Fetters said.

The 1st Amendment will be etched in stone at the entrance. The Newseum’s central theater is expected to be in a four-dimensional format that will have vibrating seats to enhance films, including the story of Edward R. Murrow’s legendary CBS radio reports from a London rooftop during World War II’s Battle of Britain.