Two Dreams Merge Into One at the Newseum

By Dean’s Intern Emily Martin at the Newseum

One of my dream jobs has always been to work at a museum. As a child, I would marvel at the exhibits in museums and dream to one day be the person behind the scenes, dusting the artifacts, writing the captions and collecting rare pieces of history.

As I grew up, I began to dream of becoming a journalist dedicated to reporting the truth. As an exhibit development intern at the Newseum, a museum whose mission is “to promote, explain and defend free expression and the five freedoms of the First Amendment: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition,” my two dreams have come true in one place.

Everyday that I go to my internship is surreal, and I’ve enjoyed all I’ve done there so far. I’ve rewritten labels for famous reporters’ artifacts, contacted embassies for information on international journalists and written biographies for one of the museum’s databases. The research and writing I’ve done daily have really tested and improved my skills and it’s only been a little over a month.

My favorite project so far has been updating nearly 50 countries in the Newseum’s World News Database. In the database, which is available in a kiosk at the Time Warner World News exhibit, there are fast facts and summaries of the state of press freedom in nearly every country in the world. The information is updated yearly by Freedom House and it’s the exhibit writers’ job to update the text entries available in the museum, and this job fell on me in January. I read through all of Freedom House’s reports and updated the summaries for the countries.

The work I’ve done here feels and is important and that is definitely my favorite part about this internship. Now more than ever, the Newseum’s mission is essential and I love that I am a part of it. I would highly recommend that other SOC students apply to intern here.