Now, Where Did We Leave Those Pulitzers?
Reporters try to stay on top of the news, but the staff of New York's Newsday was blindsided in 2007 by the auction of three Pulitzer prize medals that once belonged to the paper. The gold medals awarded for excellence in public-service journalism, one from the 1950s and two from the 1970s, appeared on eBay and were later sold at a California auction for a total of $15,500. Newsday's managers thought the prizes — the most prestigious award in journalism — were safe and sound in the paper's vault, though it had been so long since anyone had checked that a locksmith had to be called to open their safe. Sure enough, the treasures were gone, the only reported theft of a Pulitzer since the honor's introduction in 1917. Authorities eventually returned the medals, but how they were spirited out of the newspaper is a story that hasn't been published.