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Despite the sense of foreboding that permeates the newspaper industry, 14 major news-media companies and families (including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The New York Times’ Ochs-Sulzberger family, Hearst Corporation, ABC News, and NBC News) managed to pony up a combined total of $122 million to upgrade the Newseum. It’s enough to make anyone who’s followed the decline of the newspaper wonder: Couldn’t this money have been better spent on funding investigative reporting, maintaining foreign bureaus, keeping more journalists employed, or, heaven forbid, investing in reporting-based online news outlets? (The museum charges an admission fee of $20, money that visitors could have otherwise put toward, oh, renewing a newspaper subscription.)
