Media

Mystery: The Detroit News' 1982 Pulitzer Medallion is Missing

October 16, 2014, 5:33 AM by  Allan Lengel

Above: Editor Bill Giles, Sydney Freedberg, David Ashenfelter and national editor Janet Mandelstam celebrate 32 years ago.


Back in April 1982 in downtown Detroit,  there was plenty reason to celebrate at The Detroit News building on West Lafayette. Champagne corks popped in the worn newsroom. Jubilation abounded.

The paper had won its first Pulitzer Prize for reporting. Dogged reporters David Ashenfelter and Sydney Freedberg wrote a series about mysterious peacetime deaths in the Navy in which the Navy appeared to be negligent.  The series was triggered by the passing of an Algonac, Mich., sailor who died of heat exhaustion while being forced to do punitive exercises aboard the USS Ranger that was moored in the Philippines.

The paper received a gold medallion for the top Pulitzer for Public Service and displayed it in the lobby for all to see.

Then in the 1990s, the medallion, which is gold-plated and made of silver,  was removed from the lobby while the paper remodeled the building. It was never seen again.

Freedberg had long left the paper. Ashenfelter did, too, defecting to the Free Press.  He took a buyout from the paper in 2012.

About a  year before he left the Free Press, Ashenfelter  asked Detroit News Editor and Publisher, Jonathan Wolman, if he knew what had become of the missing medallion.  

Wolman, who came to the paper in June 2007, hadn’t a clue. He ordered a search, to no avail.

“I just want it to be found and make sure it isn't lost again," Ashenfelter says. 

Ashenfelter says he even called the widow of Bill Giles, top editor when The News won the Public Service Pulitzer in 1982, and asked if she might have the medallion. She said she did not. 

Just last week, Ashenfelter said he asked Wolman if he could check one last time before both papers move to a new location at the old Federal Reserve Building on Fort Street, several blocks away, that’s owned by Dan Gilbert.

Wolman has shown a keen interest in solving the mystery.

“I don’t know anything about the medallion,” he told Deadline Detroit. “I’ve talked to David many times and I don’t know its whereabouts.  I’d love to find it."

“I can tell you we’ve not only looked over the years, but in anticipation of our move to a new location – I guess in two weeks – we’ve been through every drawer and storage room and nothing has turned up."

Asked what he thinks may have happened to the medallion, Ashenfelter says: "I think someone took it home.”



Leave a Comment:

Photo Of The Day