Remembering Fallen Journalists
(Editor's Note: Washington is home to countless monuments, memorials and statues. Every Monday, DCist will feature one of the more obscure, unknown or off-the-beaten path sites around the city. We'll hit the big memorials too, but we find that smaller monuments, like to Taras Shevchenko, James Buchanan and Temperance, tend to be more interesting.)
Journalists have faced untold dangers and continue to risk their lives around the world to cover the news. And the Freedom Forum's Journalists Memorial remembers those who lost their lives to deliver the news to us. And with the situation in Iraq particularly dicey, it's good to take time out to remember those foreign correspondents who report from dangerous lands.
The journalist's memorial is part of Freedom Park, which is home to a number of artifacts from the wide-ranging realm of "Freedom," including a section of the Berlin Wall. And it's all in Rosslyn.
Currently there are the names of 1,528 journalists etched in the glass panels of the memorial. Click here to review the preliminary list of journalists killed in 2004.
Now that the Newseum is closed in preparation to moving to a new structure on Pennsylvania Avenue across the river, the Freedom Forum's Freedom Park sits sort of awkwardly on sky bridges above the normally deserted streets of Rosslyn hugging the WJLA building with views of the Washington Monument and some pretty unremarkable residental and office buildings. We're curious whether the journalist's memorial will move downtown when the new Newseum opens in 2007.
To get to the Journalsts Memorial in Freedom Park, take metrorail to the Rosslyn station (Blue or Orange lines) and walk east to the corner of 19th and Kent streets or south to Lynn Street, south of Wilson Boulevard.