Veteran newspaper editor Bob Giles joins GlobalPost as Commentary Editor

BOSTON – Bob Giles, longtime newspaper editor and former curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, has joined the international news site GlobalPost as Commentary Editor.

Giles will recruit contributors from around the world to bring authoritative analysis to a new GlobalPost section called Commentary. Giles has been a member of GlobalPost’s Editorial Advisory Board for the past three years.

“Bob brings the deep experience and wise judgment to ensure that GlobalPost delivers both diversity of thought and broad geographical perspective on the central international issues of the day in a unique and compelling Commentary section,” said GlobalPost President and CEO Philip S. Balboni.

“This is a special opportunity to bring to GlobalPost insightful analysis, provocative ideas and personal experience from contributors around the world,” said Giles. “Our goal is to publish pieces that invite conversations about global topics people care about and want to know more about.”

Giles retired last summer after 11 years as curator of the Nieman Foundation, one of the pre-eminent fellowship programs for journalists in the world. 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 Times-Union, in Rochester, NY 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. The Beacon Journal was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 when Giles directed coverage of the campus shootings at Kent State University.