Design of D.C. Memorial for Slain Journalists Is Unveiled

The Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation has unveiled its design on Monday for a National Mall monument honoring journalists killed in their line of duty, representing the first memorial for slain journalists on federal grounds.

The Washington D.C. monument, projected to open in 2028, is made up of various cast glass blocks that form a path to the memorial’s center, which culminates in a cylindrical space that includes the text of the First Amendment. The purpose, architect John Ronan said, was to mimic both the transparency journalism provides and the disparate parts that make up a complete story.

“It's a journey of discovery that unfolds slowly, space by space, like a journalist’s story unfolds line by line,” Ronan told The Daily Beast. “The idea is to cast the visitor in the role of an investigative journalist, pursuing truth wherever it leads.”

The design was completed by Ronan’s Chicago-based firm, which was selected earlier this year after a yearlong process led by Pulitzer-Prize winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger. The design will be presented to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts on Thursday for review, and the National Capital Planning Commission will review it next month.

The love for journalism is reflected through each element of the memorial’s open-air design. Ronan incorporated a classroom space for planned programming on the importance of journalism, and there will be a space reserved for broadcast journalists to do their live shots. Many of the glass slabs will also include quotes related to journalism or said by journalists themselves.

Even the memorial’s location—situated on one-third of an acre between Independence and Maryland avenues and Third Street SW with a direct view of the U.S. Capitol dome—is meant to reflect how journalism is interwoven into U.S. history.

The road to getting the memorial going was almost miraculous amid the hyperpartisanship—and sunken trust in the media—begetting the U.S. The Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation was formed in June 2019 by former U.S. representative and ex-Tribune Broadcasting Company CEO David Dreier, a Republican, to celebrate the journalists who were killed at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Maryland in 2018.

The foundation was memorialized by Congress in 2020 after it passed a bill letting the group build a memorial on federal lands—though it cannot receive federal funds. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in December 2020.

It’s that bipartisan spirit, foundation president Barbara Cochran said, that emphasizes the memorial’s importance and its place on federal land.

“These stories, I think, underscore both the important job that journalists are doing and the risks that they face,” Cochran said. “You know, it's not just in war zones, or covering corruption, covering autocrats and authoritarian regimes, and even just covering their community news in a place like Annapolis, Maryland, where journalists can encounter danger. So I think that those stories really resonate with people.”

Still, even those noble ideas can still risk inducing partisan attacks. GOP politicians have assailed U.S. journalists over their coverage of the 2024 presidential election, with lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resorting to dubious documents to attack ABC over their debate.

One of their safeguards, Cochran said, is their advisory board. The group is composed of reporters and editors from a wide swath of publications, including everyone from former New York Times and Washington Post executive editors Dean Baquet and Marty Baron to Fox News anchor Bret Baier to Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy.

“When I asked people to be on the board of advisors, it was an immediate yes in almost all instances,” Cochran said.”I think journalists especially are acutely aware of the dangers and the threats, and they recognized immediately how important it is to have this.”

It’s why such fears of partisan attacks don’t worry Cochran as much.

“There will always be criticism of individual journalists, individual news organizations,” Cochran said, but she cited Thomas Jefferson’s love for newspapers as an example of press rising above partisanship.

“He preferred a society with free journalism, with free press,” she said. “And I think officials really do feel that.”

(Note: The Daily Beast’s Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles is on the foundation’s board of advisers.)