Robert H. Giles, Newspaper Editor and Nieman Curator, Dies at 90

Robert H. Giles, who oversaw Pulitzer Prize-winning protection at two newspapers — together with experiences on the deadly taking pictures of 4 antiwar protesters by National Guard troops on the Kent State University campus in Ohio in 1970 — and later served as curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University for greater than a decade, died on Aug. 7 in Traverse City, in northern Michigan. He was 90.

The explanation for his loss of life, in a hospice facility, was issues of metastatic melanoma, mentioned Ellen Tuttle, a spokeswoman for the Nieman Foundation.

A lifelong journalist and writer and a former Nieman fellow himself, Mr. Giles (pronounced with a gentle “G”) presided over the Nieman Foundation from 2000 to 2011.

He enhanced the celebrated basis’s main mission: educating midcareer journalists. He additionally presided over the net enlargement of its quarterly journal, Nieman Reports, in addition to the Nieman Watchdog Project, which examines and helps public-interest journalism; the Nieman Journalism Lab, which helps put together journalists for the digital way forward for the occupation; and the Nieman Storyboard web site, which promotes long-form narrative storytelling.

He additionally launched a number of awards; raised funds to increase the muse’s campus headquarters; provided a haven to worldwide journalists who have been persecuted due to their occupation; wrote about points confronting his colleagues; and created fellowships to deal with topics he felt weren’t being sufficiently coated, together with world well being and native authorities.

“Bob leaves behind a community of devoted Nieman fellows who treasured him for his grace and generosity,” Ann Marie Lipinski, the present Nieman curator, mentioned in a press release. “He well understood the pressures the journalists had been laboring under and worked hard to create a program that offered inspiration and a path forward.”

Robert Hartmann Giles was born on June 6, 1933, in Cleveland to Robert Hamilton Giles and Grace (Hartmann) Giles.

He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., in 1955 with a bachelor’s diploma in journalism and went on to earn a grasp’s from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. After serving within the Army, he was employed by The Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio.

He studied as a Nieman fellow in 1965 and 1966 after which returned to Akron, the place he was managing editor of The Beacon Journal throughout an anti-Vietnam War rally on May 4, 1970, that resulted within the killing of 4 unarmed college students and the wounding of 9 others by Ohio National Guard troops on the Kent State campus.

His newspaper received a Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting for its protection. In 2020, he printed “When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later,” during which he recounted how his workers coated the story.

In 1975, after 17 years as an editorial author, metropolis editor, managing editor and govt editor, he left The Beacon Journal to show on the University of Kansas School of Journalism.

From 1977 to 1986, he was govt editor after which editor of The Democrat and Chronicle and The Times-Union in Rochester, N.Y.

He was named govt editor of The Detroit News in 1986 and later served as editor and writer. During his 11-year tenure there, he skilled a 19-month strike and the implementation of a joint working settlement with the rival Detroit Free Press. He additionally oversaw The News’s exposé of embezzlement on the Michigan House Fiscal Agency, an arm of the state House of Representatives, which received a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

In 1997, he retired from The News to affix the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit First Amendment advocacy group, as a senior vice chairman and govt director of its Media Studies Center in New York City.

Mr. Giles was the writer of “Newsroom Management: A Guide to Theory and Practice” (1987) and a previous president of the American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

He is survived by his kids, David and Rob Giles and Megan Cooney; 4 grandchildren; two step-grandsons; and his sister, Lois Eynon. His spouse, Nancy (Morgan) Giles, died in 2021.

“I think one of my strengths as a leader, editor, curator, has been my ability to enable people to succeed, to give them a lot of freedom to do their jobs, to come up with ideas, to fail, to take risks, to support them but not to meddle, because they know more about what they’re doing than I do,” Mr. Giles informed Nieman News in 2011 when he retired at 77.

“To be in a position to give this opportunity to a group of people every year,” he added, “is quite extraordinary.”