About the Author

Robert Giles made the connection between journalism and truth at a young age. The lessons came from a stern and resolute boss who would accept nothing less than accurate, fact-based stories. Seeking the truth became a guiding value in Bob’s journalism life of more than 50 years.

He is now retired and, with his wife, Nancy, lives in Traverse City, Michigan. At a time when life was slowing, a long-felt urge became a passion for telling the story that mattered most in his newspaper life. He wanted the world to know of the Akron Beacon Journal’s truthful narrative in reporting the campus shootings at Kent State, May 4, 1970. Before it was too late.

After service in the U.S. Army, his first reporting job, in 1958, was at the Beacon Journal. In 1965, he won a Nieman Fellowship and then accepted his editor’s challenge of learning to be an editor. By May 1970, he had become the paper’s managing editor.

After 17 years in Akron, Giles tried teaching journalism, briefly, at the University of Kansas. He loved the Jayhawks and the experience of opening young minds to the rigors of journalism. But he was a practitioner at heart and wanted to get back to a newsroom. 

From 1977-1986, Giles was executive editor and then editor at the Democrat & Chronicle and the Times-Union, in Rochester, N.Y. While in Rochester, he wrote a text book called Newsroom Management.

His final newspaper job was as editor and publisher of The Detroit News. He retired in 1997, but he wasn’t finished.  An opportunity with the Freedom Forum and its Media Studies Center in New York City enabled Giles to direct an extensive examination of fairness in the news media.

Giles retired from the Freedom Forum in 2000 and, at age 67, moved on to the grandest job of all, as curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. During the final 11 years of his working life, he savored the privilege of selecting bright, courageous, working journalists for a transformative year of learning and expanding horizons. 

Giles was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. He is a past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and of the Associated Press Managing Editors, and past president of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism.

Giles grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a 1955 graduate of DePauw University. He received his master’s degree in 1956 from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He received the honorary Doctorate in Journalism from DePauw in 1996. 

His wife, Nancy, is a psychologist and a specialist in trauma. They have three children: David is vice president and deputy general counsel for E.W. Scripps Co. He and his wife, Ellen, live in Cincinnati. Rob lives in Springfield, Va., with his wife, Kelly, and two daughters. He is a prosecutor in the U.S. Navy Trial Counsel Assistance Program. Megan, an artist and former journalist, lives in Darien, Conn., with her husband, Jay, and their two children.