Reporters are a motley crew.

We’re not all pretty to look at ’ like NBC’s Ann Curry ’ and sometimes we’re annoying, calling people at all hours of the day and night asking questions, questions that people may not want to answer. Or you see us standing next to a burning house, at a shooting scene or in the courtroom, watching and listening to find out what happened and why.

From the poison pens of Mark Twain and Stephen Crane to the muckrakers of the gaslight era like Jake Riis and Lincoln Steffens, news people have been characterized as rabble-rousers, angry scribblers, malcontents and degenerates who need to find real jobs.

Those perceptions have changed over time. With the advent of radio and television that fostered Edward R. Murrow during the London Blitz in World War II and Walter Cronkite’s evening newscasts, people started to believe we weren’t all bad.

Add the unpopular Vietnam War, the tumultuous Civil Rights years, and the Washington Post’s Watergate reporting that brought down Richard Nixon and inspired Hollywood to make ’All the President’s Men,’ and we started getting a little respect.

The rise of 24-hour cable news that followed those years created a media maelstrom that has given John Q. Public more information than he ever wanted to know about anything.

Earlier this year, a place opened for us to share with you the way we get our information and provide you with a glimpse of why we do what we do.

It’s called the Newseum and it’s located on the last open lot on Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks away from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It’s a celebration of all things news and a mecca for journalists who care about their profession.

It’s also the city’s newest attraction, drawing throngs of tourists.

Between the elaborate fountain of the Navy Memorial and the Canadian embassy, the yard-high letters of the First Amendment are carved into a 74-foot-tall marble tablet. Beneath the oft-debated words that define our American democracy are the front pages of a sampling of newspapers from across the globe.

The building itself is all about shadows and light and it’s somewhat discombobulating to walk through doorways in transparent walls. A gigantic screen screams historic headlines like Don Larson’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, along with whatever news is breaking now. Visitors are encouraged to take elevators to the rooftop and work their way down.

Outside on the sixth-floor terrace more of today’s newspapers are displayed, along with a history of Pennsylvania Avenue ’ referred to as ’America’s Main Street.’

Inside and down a level is a primer for the uninitiated on the indescribable magic of newsprint: a ’history of news’ that traces man’s need for information from the Stone Age through the second millennium. Unique artifacts like Mark Twain’s inkwell and corn cob pipe, Margaret Bourke-White’s camera and columnist Mike Royko’s Rolodex are there. So is one of the notebooks recording one of the first whisperings of a scandal involving Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton. A flak jacket worn by CNN’s Peter Arnett during the first Gulf War is displayed, as are preserved newspapers from around the globe describing major world events since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s.

On the fourth floor, a gallery is dedicated to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It captures the horror of that day and tells the story of some of the journalists at the World Trade Center who watched and reported as the tragedy unfolded. Tissues are provided at several places in that somber area and several visitors were overcome with emotion as they viewed the exhibits, which include rubble-dust-covered cameras and equipment belonging to William Biggart, a freelance journalist who died at Ground Zero.

The somber mood continues a floor below in a gallery of names and mug shots of journalists who died getting a story. Among them is Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002 after being kidnapped in Pakistan.