By: The Newseum, a museum dedicated to journalism and the First Amendment, has received $52 million in gifts from eight major media companies and families as part of an effort to open a state-of-the-art complex near the Capitol.
The donations include $10 million from The New York Times Co., and $10 million from News Corp., which owns Fox News Channel and New York Post.
The gifts will help pay for construction of the new $435 million facility, which is scheduled to open in fall 2007 on Pennsylvania Avenue, officials said. The original Newseum, across the Potomac River in Arlington, Va., was open from 1997 to 2002, when officials at its parent organization, the Freedom Forum, decided to build a larger facility.
Other donors are NBC Universal; Time Warner Inc.; Hearst Corp.; ABC News/Walt Disney Co.; the Greenspun family, which owns the Las Vegas Sun newspaper; and the family of Eugene C. Pulliam, who once owned 46 newspapers across the country.
The money will help fund galleries and multimedia exhibits that will take visitors behind the scenes of how news is made, museum officials said.
"This is the most ambitious effort ever to educate the public about the First Amendment and the important role of a free press in society," Alberto Ibarguen, chairman of the Newseum's executive committee, said in a statement. "This broad base of support underscores the importance of the Newseum's mission."
Plans call for the new, 250,000-square-foot museum to have seven levels of galleries, theaters and retail space. Artifacts will include the world's first news satellite truck along with a CNN video satellite phone and a pre-Civil War photo wagon that allowed photographers to develop pictures in the field.
A 74-foot high marble engraving of the First Amendment will be placed at the museum's entrance.
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