Bob Giles was a highly valued member of the National Writers Series Board, lending to our meetings his hard-earned wisdom wrought from a long career of publishing. We will miss him. In his honor and memory, NWS set up a named author series: Bob Giles “Matters of Truth” Nonfiction Author Conversations. The series will support authors with books written with accuracy, balance, context, and objectivity—Bob’s most highly prized values as a reporter and editor.
A newspaper reporter and editor for 40 years, most recently in Detroit, he served as editor and publisher of The Detroit News for 11 years.
One of the highlights of his newspaper years was serving as managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal where he directed the coverage of the campus shootings at Kent State in May 1970. Giles and the reporting team shared the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. He wrote an account of the young staff’s unflagging efforts to drill down to what actually happened on that fateful day (in the face of political pressures) in the book, When Truth Mattered (Mission Point Press).
Before moving to Traverse City, Giles was curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Giles also served on the board of the International Affairs Forum, the Traverse Symphony Orchestra and was a long-time supporter of the Leelanau Conservancy.