Don't Feed the Techno-Pod: Newseum's Coolest 'Exhibit'

Down the hall from the Bloomberg gallery, in a far corner of the third floor, Newseum visitors press their noses against the glass wall. They eye three guys slumped in silver Aeron chairs, then glance over to the nearly 150 flashing screens. Bright. Alive. Important. Some snap pictures; others point and whisper; all nod their heads in awe.

But at what, exactly?

Doug Young, here from Chantilly, theorizes that "it's meant to be an exhibit -- to show what a newsroom would be like [and] how difficult it is for these guys to keep track of all the different channels." Nick Rizik, visiting from Long Island, suggests it is a channel, "looking for the latest news, in case they want to break in and someone makes a decision to show it on whatever news station it is." Mary Calvert of Alexandria says it's "a newsroom display with . . . ugh, what's that word?" Pause.

" Mannequins!"

On the other side of the glass wall, the men in the chairs shake their heads. "It's weird," says 53-year-old Eddie Munden of the confusion his office has provoked since the Newseum's April opening on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Although after a while, you get to the point where you tune it out. You have work to do."

Munden's work, in fact, is what keeps the Newseum going. As manager of technical operations, he oversees the vast digital structure underpinning the museum's gleaming, streaming displays. There are 15 theaters, 14 galleries, two TV studios and 130 touch screens.

That means hundreds of miles of cable, rows of black, stacked, humming servers and so much juice that Pepco restricts the booting of the electronic systems, which must take place in a 15-to-20-minute period each morning, lest the museum blow out part of the grid. And Munden sits in the middle of it all, manipulating the machines in a gawked-at glass control room, a spot dubbed "the nerve center" by affectionate colleagues.

"We're basically an exhibit," he says with a shrug, explaining how it happened: During the move from the Newseum's previous location in Arlington, execs realized that the master control room, which had been hidden in the old building, appeared more exciting than the TV control rooms, which are used only when a show is being recorded. So they buried the TV rooms in the back and thrust Munden's room out front, despite the fact that he is not news, or a mannequin, but a man-- a man of maintenance, in many ways the man who puts the nerve in the nerve center.

But what kind of crew thrives in a nerve center, reclining behind the computers, unable to click or type without a tourist observing? What do they think, watching us watch them?

Each day at the Newseum begins at 5:30 a.m., when staffers begin printing 150 of that day's front pages from around the world, which will be displayed in cases inside and on the street front. At 7, a program turns on all the electronic exhibits automatically. At 7:30, Munden begins his day, in a blue-striped oxford shirt and Dickies pants, tortoise-shell reading glasses dangling from his neck. He and his team of seven, which he recruited from Craigslist and AV-enthusiast Web sites, depart the control room to check that the displays have actually booted.

Munden rushes through concealed doors, into the Newseum bowels, past cubicles lined with collections of Nantucket Nectars bottles, bobbleheads and vintage microphones, to the 9/11 Gallery, the News History Gallery and the 100-foot-wide Big Screen Theater. In the "4-D" theater, which squirts water in viewers' faces, among other tricks, Munden supervises an engineer awakening two big blue projectors, which rumble to life like a "Transformers" beast.

Why spend the day like this? Munden used to be a production director and control operator for radio and television stations. But he recalls a trip he took to another museum with his 7-year-old son. "They didn't have a lot of interactives to begin with, and 80 percent of them didn't work," mutters Munden, who's been with the Newseum for 11 years. "I could see the disappointment on his face. That's sort of my driving force. I don't want that to happen here."

By 8:24, Munden and the boys have returned to the nerve center. At 9, the Newseum will open, and their public day will begin. "They love tapping on the glass to see the fishes," says Matt Levine, chuckling, in frameless spectacles and the team's trademark "Technical Operations" fleece, which Munden bought for them when he realized how cold the glass box was. "Matt started the tradition of waving to people in the elevator," Munden adds, looking out into the atrium. And sure enough, later, a glass cube will rise in the air alongside the nerve center, and kids smushed like sardines will click disposable cameras. "We were going to install one of these peanut machines, like at the zoo," jokes team member Walt Hassett. "Technician food."

A woman once tried to barge in. (The door's now locked and labeled "Staff Only.") And here's the silly part: Not one but two signs outside the nerve explain it to passersby, telling them that these are the men who control all the displays. One announces, "Technology at Work." Another proclaims, "The state-of-the-art data and telecommunications network makes the Newseum one of the most technologically advanced museums in the world."

Somehow, no one takes the time to look.

George Stephanopoulos, in a suit and pink tie, tramps briskly through the nerve center at 8:54, en route to the studio down the hall where he hosts ABC's "This Week." He turns his head to the guys and smiles, as one might at a high school AV club. Perhaps he hasn't noticed. This room here, and the possibly-fake people in it, have become news.