Location Sintra, Portugal Visitors 80.000 (expected) President Luís Paixão Martins | Type News and Media Museum Director Rodrigo Moita de Deus | |
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Established 2016; 1 year ago (2016) | ||
The NewsMuseum is a museum dedicated to news, media and communication located in Sintra, Portugal, that is opening on April 25, 2016.
Contents
It occupies the former facilities of the Museu do Brinquedo (Toy Museum) and presents, in a physical and virtual space, a history of the media and journalism evolution.
The Acta Diurna association, which promotes the project and is presided by Luís Paixão Martins, has invested approximately 1.8 million euros. The project also has the support of the Sintra’s city council, which lent the property in the historic center to the association, for 20 years.
Thematic areas
In more than 25 thematic areas across the three floors of the building, the visitors can explore episodes of the history of Portugal and the World through their media coverage.
There are more than 300 articles and a total of 16 hours of information/entertainment and multimedia, an interactive approach that allows the visitor not only to look, but also to take part in the stories.
The NewsMuseum aims to be a Media Age Experience, an open window to the world of media and communication, and their impact on society, with a strong digital and technological component.
"iArena", one of the main rooms of NewsMuseum, tells stories through a touch screen of 67m2, one of the largest in the world, with 360º view. Another highlight is the "Pyramid of Babel", a metallic tower with 69 television screens broadcasting the main news channels from all over the planet.
An interactive globe allows the NewsMuseum visitors to find out the level of freedom of the press throughout the world. News from national and international media are projected in real time on one of the walls.
The room dedicated to War Journalism, in which there’s a recreation of the balcony where reporters covered the first night of the Gulf War, has journalist José Rodrigues dos Santos as curator.
On the third floor, visitors can find media duels, an area about the rivalries that the media portrayed, such as the famous debate between Mário Soares and Álvaro Cunhal.
In the thematic area about propaganda, NewsMuseum presents the most emblematic propagandists, including António Ferro, and the critics of this communication tool. Visitors can also see iconic political posters and "paint" one of them on the wall.
In the sports room, a look at the careers of Eusébio and Cristiano Ronaldo through the eyes of the media and at José Mourinho’s press conferences, as seen through Machiavelli’s teachings.
NewsMuseum invites the visitors on a journey to the future using the glasses of virtual reality, an 8-minute experience that takes them through the world of journalism of today and of the future.
The thematic area dedicated to radio takes the visitors to a radio booth, where they can read a MFA [military movement] statement on the microphone, reproducing the atmosphere of the early hours of 25th April, 1974.
Some of the most notable personalities of Portuguese journalism are remembered through multimedia content, in a thematic area that includes the participation of professionals of the field.
Across the three floors there are several Fun Zones, including a Rubik cube where visitors can make the first page of a newspaper, according to their answers to questions about journalistic ethics. Manuela Moura Guedes tests the media culture of the visitors, in a quiz about the world of communication.
The media experience includes every corner of NewsMuseum, including the elevator. On the outside, the visitors can find a statue of journalist and author Eça de Queiroz, with his eyes "glued" to his smartphone.
The content is available in Portuguese and English, making the project bilingual.
Biblioteca NewsMuseum
NewsMuseum also promotes Biblioteca NewsMuseum, an initiative with the seal of Chiado Editora, which publishes books related to journalism, media and communication.
On October 15th, 2015 the first two books of Biblioteca NewsMuseum were presented at Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, in Lisbon: Novo Dicionário da Comunicação, an encyclopaedia of several generations of journalism and media terms and Tinha tudo para correr mal, the professional memories of Luís Paixão Martins.