The Journalist
PETER PRICHARD '66 makes headlines with his Newseum.
Prichard landed his first newspaper job at the Greenwich Time newspaper in Connecticut in 1970, a copy editor gig that paid $95 a week. That break launched him on a career in journalism, as a sportswriter, television producer, feature writer, political editor and, from 1988 until 1995, editor-in-chief of USA Today. Now he's making news by opening the doors in mid-April to the Newseum, a state-of-the-art, interactive museum he directs as president.
The 250,000-square-foot museum is actually the second Newseum. Prichard led the team of museum and news professionals that built the original $50 million Newseum in Arlington, Virginia. In its five years of operation between 1997 and 2001 the Newseum attracted more than 2.2 million visitors and won several national awards for its design, video and interactive productions. The new venture's chief funder is the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech.
The new seven-story, $450 million complex on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., tells the story of five centuries of news history through exhibits in 14 galleries, 15 theaters, two broadcast studios and more than 100 interactive touch screens. The main atrium of the building features a giant news ticker and 40-by-22-foot high-definition media screen that displays breaking news stories. Artifacts in the Newseum's collection include a three-story guard tower that was part of the Berlin Wall; a flak jacket worn in Iraq by Bob Woodruff, who was nearly killed there in 2006 when working as news anchor of ABC World NewsTonight, and a collection of more than 30,000 historic newspapers.
For Prichard—who credits Dartmouth professors Noel Perrin, John Finch and Chauncy Loomis with kindling his love of the written wordserving as president of the Newseum is the culmination of a career spent documenting news. "This is the most ambitious effort ever to educate the public about the news media and the First Amendment," he says.
