Newsday Pulitzer medals are missing

Top officials at Newsday drilled into a safe at the paper's Melville offices yesterday and found three gold Pulitzer Prize medals missing, prompting an investigation by Suffolk police.

The whereabouts of the medals, representing the Pulitzer Prizes awarded to Newsday for public service in 1954, 1970 and 1974, first became an issue Monday when it was learned that they had apparently been sold Friday at an auction in Long Beach, Calif., for $7,000, $4,500 and $4,000, respectively.

Officials had long known that the Pulitzer medals mounted on a plaque in Newsday's executive offices in Melville were replicas, but had believed until yesterday that the 2 1/2-inch originals were secure in a company safe.

"We have contacted the police and we are talking to our attorneys to pursue all legal avenues available to us," Newsday spokeswoman Deidra Parrish Williams said. "We are naturally disheartened and disappointed to discover that our medals are not in our possession. We are consoled by the fact that the medals are not the prize itself. The Pulitzer Prize is the distinction Newsday earns when a prestigious panel of judges deems the quality of our work as superior to our peers. While that is something that cannot be taken away, we hope to have the medals returned to us."

It was unclear whether the medals sold at auction were the same ones missing from the Newsday safe or were replicas. In 1984, the prize's Columbia University administrators gave Newsday permission to create reproductions of the three prizes for display at the paper's New York City offices. Those copies were created by Nevada-based Medallic Art Co., the same firm that made the originals. Whether those replicas are made of gold is also unknown.

A former Newsday editor, Bob Greene, who led the team that won the 1970 and '74 prizes, said he was disappointed. "It's amazing that a newspaper which has been awarded the highest prize the Pulitzer committee can give has not properly safeguarded its Pulitzer medals," he said.

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