Rana Sweis

Journalism World

The Newseum in deep trouble

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“Make no little plans,” wrote the visionary architect Daniel Burnham. “They have no power to stir men’s blood.”

Inspiring words, yes, but sometimes one can get carried away.

There are few better examples than the Newseum, the iconic edifice that opened its Pennsylvania Avenue NW doors in 2008 and has been awash in red ink ever since.

On Monday, its chief executive, Jeffrey Herbst, stepped down and the museum’s parent, the Freedom Foundation, acknowledged publicly what insiders have known for a long time:

The Newseum is in big financial trouble. It may have to sell its building — still shiny and new. And, though no one is saying it publicly, it may end up going under altogether.

The signs weren’t good from its overblown start. The building is seven stories tall with 250,000 square feet of exhibit space, 15 theaters and an adjoining multistory Wolfgang Puck restaurant.

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Journalism World

Village Voice Lays Off 13 Union Employees

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Just before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, employees at The Village Voice in Manhattan received an email from co-workers saying that the weekly newspaper appeared to be on the verge of announcing layoffs.

Within a few hours about a dozen employees were summoned into a conference room inside The Voice office in the Financial District and told that they would no longer have jobs after the third week of September, a union representative said, when the paper’s final print edition will be distributed.

Thirteen of the paper’s 17 union workers are being laid off, said the president of the local that has represented Voice workers since 1977, when Rupert Murdoch bought the paper. According to the union, they include a writer, a social media producer, an administrative assistant and a photo editor who has worked for decades at the left-leaning newspaper, which was started in 1955 by Norman Mailer and others then went on to provide a blueprint for a scrappy, muckraking journalistic format that became known as the alt-weekly.

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