Jim Regan -- Site Reviews
The Newseum and 'War Stories'
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Fortunately for most of us, the closest we've been to the real thing are the reports filed and images captured by war correspondents around the world. War Stories investigates how these people have done their jobs -- and how those jobs have changed -- over the last hundred-odd years.
Launched in April, War Stories is a part of the Newseum website, (the online presence of the museum of news in Arlington, Va.) which also offers examinations of such subjects as the press silence regarding the Holocaust during World War II, and the role of media technology during the 1960s space program.
The exhibit begins with a collection of Video Interviews, and an examination of the advances in Media & Technology over more than a century of reporting - as well as the way those advances affected the coverage itself.
The interviews -- available in both QuickTime and Windows Media Player formats -- offer short clips with journalists from World War II through to the Gulf War, as they reflect on everything from especially dangerous encounters, to whether there are any images a war photographer would refuse to record. Some questions, such as, "Describe the control of the military" are asked of reporters from each conflict, allowing visitors to see the changes in factors like the degree of 'freedom of the press' over time.
Interviews can also be accessed by the correspondent's name, so if you have a particular interest in the views of Walter Cronkite or Christiane Amanpour, you can move directly to their pages. (The clips themselves are accompanied by a brief bio of the journalist as well as text transcripts of their responses.)
Media & Technology looks even further back -- to the Civil War -- as it examines the relations between cutting-edge tools of the trade and how those tools affected the way news was reported. Covering seven conflicts, (ending with Bosnia/Kosovo) Media examines the degree and style of Coverage, methods of Reporting, and relevant Technology for each period. (The later category begins with telegraph and glass-plate photography in the Civil War and concludes with the digital video, satellite uplinks, and of course, internet coverage of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.)
The exhibit wraps up with an extensive and absorbing essay by Harold Evans (guest curator and author of "The American Century") - taken from a companion book to the exhibit, and touching on the four main themes of the physical display in Arlington;
As for visitor 'requirements,' the Video Interviews claim a 200MHz processor, 300k bandwidth minimum. (It's becoming increasingly difficult to find sites designed with dial-up surfers in mind -- or even broadband sites with low-bandwidth options -- despite the fact that these slower connections are still used by the vast majority of surfers. And I'm always puzzled by sites that essentially tell more than half of their potential visitors to 'go away.')
Still, my processor is a mere 132 MHz, and even with the slower connection, the non-video Media & Technology section moved along briskly, with Flash-enabled pages taking less than ten seconds to load. The Video Interviews, on the other hand, required a two-minute wait to view a one-minute clip, and considering the number of clips available, not many 56k visitors will have the patience to view more than a few.
It would have been nice if this exhibit had included audio-only versions of the clips (perhaps with still images of the journalists - there's not much movement in the videos anyway). For those who do want to know how the reporters responded, but don't want to wait to view the videos, there is the option of interrupting the video download, then clicking on the "Caption Text" link and reading the transcript.
But whether you view the videos or not, you're likely to spend a good deal of time here, and that time will be well spent.
War Stories can be found at www.newseum.org/warstories.