GILES EXPECTED TO BE NAMED HEAD OF NIEMAN FOUNDATION

By: Bill Kirtz Former Detroit Editor Replaces Kovach



Robert H. Giles, senior vice president of The Freedom Forum and
executive director of the Media Studies Center, has reportedly been
named curator of Harvard's Nieman Foundation.



The 67-year-old Giles, a former editor and publisher of The Detroit
News, had been considered the front-runner for the Nieman post left
open by the retirement of Bill Kovach. However, unions involved in
the long and bitter Detroit newspaper strike had protested against
his appointment to the prestigious Harvard post.



Giles, a 1966 Nieman Fellow, has been president of the American Society
of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press Managing Editors. Two
newspapers at which Giles served as editor have won Pulitzer Prizes:
the Akron Beacon Journal in 1971 for its coverage of the campus shootings
at Kent State University and The Detroit News in 1994 for its disclosures
of a scandal in the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. He has served as a
Pulitzer Prize juror six times.







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Bill Kirtz is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University.













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