Yesterday, DCRTV heard rumors of "a steady stream of employee departures at the newsgathering museum near Capitol Hill" (aka the Newseum).

A Newseum rep tells FishbowlDC:

We think the Newseum is doing very well in its first year of operation -- especially in these challenging economic times. Because we just opened April 11, 2008, we do not have the basis for comparison that other institutions do for judging attendance. But we are on track to meet our goals of matching or doing better than our highest attendance year in Arlington, VA., where the Newseum was free. The Newseum just had three of its top 10 attendance days between mid-October and early November (not a traditionally high time for tourists in DC) and we already know that we will have more than 12,000 visitors on the two days before the Inauguration. (We have group tours of 6,000 already booked for each of those days.)

We continue to get rave reviews from our visitors and expect even more next year.

But then the not so hot news:

We had 19 staffers take advantage of our voluntary buyout package and two others retire. That represents a staff reduction of about 10%.