A Chance to Get the Story Behind the Stories

This just in: A traveling news museum landed in Griffith Park on Wednesday, bringing with it classic TV clips, historical newspapers, films and interactive exhibits that will allow viewers to “walk in journalists’ shoes.”

The NewsCapade, a mini museum-on-wheels that will travel to all 50 states in the next two years, hosted its first local visitors on Wednesday in the L.A. Zoo parking lot. The exhibit is sponsored by the Newseum, a Washington, D.C., area museum that seeks to educate the public about how the press functions.

Visitor John Matzke, 83, stood before replicas of old front pages and let the memories ripple back.

“There’s a lot of things I remember here,” said Matzke, who had been out for his daily 20-mile bike ride in the park. “I remember Lindbergh crossing the ocean.”

A wall of front pages screamed out bold headlines, from the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Live broadcasts recalled the Los Angeles riots and the Challenger explosion.

Touch-screen computer terminals asked tough questions of visitors: What do you put on the front page? Which photographs are best? Would you report that a celebrity has AIDS, or run a photo of a woman being electrocuted?

“The public does not have a good understanding of the news media,” said Jack Marsh, director of the NewsCapade and a journalist for 27 years. “The public holds journalists in low esteem. We’re here simply as a catalyst for bringing the public and the media together.”

The first visitors said they were impressed with the movable museum. “This is great,” said Brittany Baquet, a 20-year-old student at Citrus Community College. “Most [reporters] get a bad rap, but it’s important that people understand the media.”

The early-morning visitors seemed too shy to step in front of the simulated TV news cameras, which stood ready with TelePrompTers and a backdrop of the White House. The exhibits are a sampling of what is available at the Newseum, the 2-year-old facility in Arlington, Va. The NewsCapade and the Newseum itself are projects of the Freedom Forum, a foundation dedicated to the cause of free speech.

Los Angeles news stories were memorialized by a Los Angeles Times exhibit titled “Stories that Shaped the Century,” which remembered the 1928 collapse of the St. Francis dam, the 1932 Summer Olympics, the 1965 Watts riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Visitors explored some serious issues: the questions of fairness, censorship and what happens when a reporter makes a mistake.

Bruce Ebmeyer, 30, of Apple Valley stood in front of an exhibit titled “Why Can’t They Get It Right?” which recounted some of journalism’s most egregious errors and fabrications.

“When Ted Koppel makes a mistake on live TV, it’s because that’s what the people want,” said Ebmeyer, who owns a bus company. “They’d rather get the news first and fix mistakes later. In a sense, it’s the public’s fault.”

The exhibit, co-sponsored by The Times, is free and will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Saturday.