Trust Me, I'm a Reporter...

I've been always attracted to the archives - archives on everything.

I remember as a kid, I'd go to the public libraries to browse through the books and smell the covers of the very old books. I pretended they smelled "history" - and the smell of my morning print press still fascinates me. But please, do not think I'm weird.

Not at all. As a matter of fact, yesterday when I went to visit Newseum in Washington, DC - [the one that cost $20 billion to build] - I came across a gift shop, which sells cups with a tag "I love the smell of my morning newsprint" - so, there! I'm not weird at all...I actually got that cup, long with the one that says "Trust me, I'm a reporter" - the line that could be interpreted both as a "sarcasm" and as a "true statement"...


Either way, of course, I got stuck on the fourth floor - [after I browsed through the amazing, breathtaking Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery] - the one that carries thousands of the U.S. newspapers' covers starting from the very first one...It's called News Corporation News History Gallery: The Story of News.

I couldn't take my eyes off...Here is a newspaper front page announcing the very first Playboy magazine issue...Here is a newspaper front page announcing the sinking of Titanic...Here is a newspaper cover announcing the death of John Lennon...I went ballistic over these archives, leaving the museum breathless and restless.


Now I can understand why it cost so much, because of all the artifacts, video footage, photo and audios, memorabilia of famous people and events that took place in USA from the times of its inception - [all of it that pertains to the 'press/media world'] - all of it is absolutely prices and probably took a long time to find, retrieve, restore and make it accessible for the rest of us...It kind of made me very proud about my journalistic profession, I must say...

And just imagine that this was the first TV set...Welcome to the digital age and 21st Century of plazma TVs and tablets...






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