WILL WRITE FOR FOOD

Today, I arrived in Washington, DC. I wasn't sure where to go. In a way, I'm not sure why I'm here. 

I found myself at the Newseum. I thought it was a museum about journalism but it's not. It's a museum about news.

That's fine. It makes you realize how important the media is. That it's what matters. That it's the vessel through which the national conversation is conducted. 

After, I wondered if the media or the news is more important. I don't know the answer to that question. 

There was a section on the third floor where kids could pretend to be journalists. Well, not journalists, really. They could pretend to be a news reporter. Which is sort of the glamorous version of a reporter. There was a gaggle of kids running around, and they stood on sets in front of projected images of the White House, and they read scripts, and then they watched videos of themselves telling the news to America.  

I spent some time in the Pulitzer-winning photographs section. The photos were arresting; although, the presentation was very weak. The smaller photos were so small you couldn't see them very well, and the bigger photos were not every well printed. I liked that the cameras that had taken some of the most memorable images of the time had been donated, so you could see the camera that took this famous shot. An artifact. The thing that created the thing was the prize. 

I didn't even see everything. I have to go back tomorrow. 

Out front, a young man was pretending to be a newsboy at a newsstand. He said the news was bad. I asked him what he meant. He said the President had been killed. He was talking about JFK. It wasn't until later that I realized the newsboy and his newsstand were a promotional tool for a movie that's coming out soon. In a way, it was confusing. Was the news happening or had it happened already? For a minute, I wasn't sure.