Robert Giles
bob_giles@harvard.edu
Robert H. Giles is Curator of the Nieman Foundation. He worked for nearly 40 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, most recently as editor and publisher of The Detroit News, which he joined in 1986 as executive editor. From 1977-1986, Giles was executive editor and then editor at the Democrat & Chronicle and the Times-Union, in Rochester, N.Y. His newspaper career began in 1958 at the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, where he held several reporting and editing positions before becoming managing editor and then executive editor.
As managing editor of the Beacon Journal, Giles directed coverage of the campus shootings at Kent State University, for which the newspaper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Before coming to Harvard in 2000, he was a senior vice president of the Freedom Forum and executive director of its Media Studies Center in New York City.
Giles is a graduate of DePauw University and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He was a Nieman Fellow in 1966. He received an honorary Doctorate in Journalism from DePauw in 1996.
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Contributions
Transparency benefits the practice of journalism
COMMENTARY | May 01, 2004
'The Nieman Watchdog Project ... is grounded in the belief that probing questions are essential to informed reporting' 
Nieman Foundation to offer global health fellowships
SHOWCASE | January 30, 2006
Curator Bob Giles describes pilot program that will run for the next 3 years; funding is by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and work includes four months in a developing country after a year at Harvard.
‘The emerging mind of community journalism’
COMMENTARY | April 14, 2006
Participants at an Alabama session on community papers (circulation under 50,000) focus on leaving aloofness behind and connecting with readers in a personal way.
Giles urges TV reporters to ask tougher questions
COMMENTARY | January 12, 2007
TV has an edge over print in that it can take viewers along for the interview. But too often, writes the Nieman Foundation curator, American TV reporters accept evasive, reluctant answers without pressing for more. Why not follow the British model of tough interviewing?
A new I.F. Stone medal
SHOWCASE | March 05, 2008
As part of its watchdog journalism commitment, the Nieman Foundation is establishing an annual award in recognition of journalistic independence and brave, provocative reporting.
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Bruce Kushnick questions whether AT&T and Verizon are trying to kill off the “plain old telephone service” that millions of Americans rely on. In a recent FCC filing cited by Kushnick, AT&T stated that landline utilities are from a bygone era, and asked to be relieved of its obligations to service them. 
The GAO showed that contractors’ estimates have nothing to do with reality, and economic hard times may eventually force the President and Congress to rein in outrageously costly warships, planes and missile systems that don’t work. But that time isn’t here yet.
It’s easy to find activism, impossible to find original intent behind the Roberts/Scalia group’s ruling on corporate political spending. Martin Lobel suggests six sharp, practical steps to deal with it.
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As an old assignment editor I’m used to asking questions and not being embarrassed if they expose me as naïve or wrong minded, because sometimes there’s a good story lurking. So here are a few simple questions. The biggest financial institutions are said to be on the verge of issuing $145 billion in bonuses. My [...] 
A friend and contributor to Nieman Watchdog, Martin Lobel, sent this emaiI with the suggestion that people pass it along. Looks worth passing along to me. Here’s Marty:
“I don’t know whether you’re as upset with the Supreme Court’s legislating in Citizens United v. FEC as I am, but there is a simple solution that is [...]
Item: The New York Times reported Friday afternoon that “two more Democratic senators” said they would vote against a second term for Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. From there, the Times said this made it unclear “whether there were the 60 votes necessary to confirm Mr. Bernanke.”
Excuse me? Sixty votes are not necessary to [...]
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Torture probe abandoned
For lack of interest, the Senate will not move ahead on the idea to appoint a commission to investigate detention, rendition and interrogation policies by the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration.
(Secrecy News)
Find John Brennan's op ed
Harry Shearer, working from a fantasy assignment desk, wants reporters to find a 2005 anti-Iraq war op ed that never was published.
(Huffington Post)
Those Mohammed cartoons
On Jan 2 a man with an axe tried to attack the Danish artist whose 12 depictions of the prophet Mohammed created a furor in 2005. After the failed attack, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted six of the drawings.
(Editors Weblog)
Afghanistan surge to rely heavily on private contractors
Private contractors are expected to make up at least half of the total military workforce in Afghanistan, according to Defense Department officials cited in a recent study from the Congressional Research Service. The number of contractors will likely increase by between 16,000 and 56,000 for a total of 120,000-160,000.
(TPM Muckraker)
Recession scars will be lasting
The aftershocks from deep recessions reverberate for years, even decades.
(USA Today)
The curious spending of a GOP pro-choice PAC
The money doesn't seem to actually go to supporting choice.
(Center for Public Integrity)
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