Nieman Candidate Angers Journalists

A former Detroit News editor is the leading candidate in Harvard's nine-month search for a new head for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, industry sources said this week. But the future of the candidate, Robert Giles, may be imperiled by his controversial role in an ongoing five-year long strike at the News.

Giles, who was 66 in May, confirmed that he is a candidate for the position of curator, but would not say whether President Neil L. Rudenstine has made an offer.

"That's Harvard's decision to announce," he said. "I'm still having conversations with them."

Some of his former employees at the News--including journalists Allan Lengel, Robert Ourlian, Kathleen Desmet and several others--have contacted the University to express their opposition to Giles' candidacy because of his anti-union stance in the Detriot strike and his ties to Gannett, a newspaper publishing group that they accuse of nearly ruining the News.

University officials refused to say when a decision would be made, but in an interview on Wednesday afternoon, Giles said he would be able to talk to the press within one or two days, once the University has made an announcement.

Jackie O'Neil, Staff Director for Rudenstine, would not confirm or deny that Giles is under consideration for the post.

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that Roy Gutman of Newsday, previously mentioned as another leading candidate for the post, said he was no longer in the running.

On Strike

The strike--and Giles's involvement with Gannett, a conglomerate some journalists hold in low regard--have made enemies of some of his colleagues.

He is currently a senior vice president of the Freedom Forum, a center founded by Gannett that promotes a free press.

"Giles and his company, Gannett, virtually destroyed [The News] over a

period of 12-13 years," Ourlian wrote in an e-mail message.

Lengel, now with the Washington Post, said Giles had an "active hand" in creating "journalistically criminal coverage of the strike" and printing slanted stories.

Giles's possible appointment as Nieman curator is "the worst thing that could happen to journalism, " Desmet said.

The Alliance, a group of six unions in Detroit still striking against the Times, issued a press release last week opposing Giles's candidacy that accuses Harvard of being tempted by the "infamous checkbook of Gannett." Gannett owns papers across the country, including USA Today.

But run-ins with labor unions are part of the job, Giles's defenders point out.

John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, said anyone

working in management at the Detroit papers was bound to butt heads with

labor.

"Giles has a sterling reputation among editors as a strong journalist and as a wonderful person," Carroll said.

Giles is a career Gannett executive but that does not preclude him from being a fine journalist, some say.

"He's certainly a creature of a Gannett system," said Newsweek contributing editor Ellis Cose. "But they do actually create some people who are very good."

"In Detroit he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's becomes a question of whether you hold that against him or not," he said.

Anatomy of a Selection

Last fall Kovach, former head of the New York Times Washington bureau and editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, announced his intention to leave Harvard by June and said that he hoped a successor would be named by the Nieman Foundation reunion in late April.

Just before the reunion, Harvard was engaged in serious discussions with Carroll, who was leaving his job as editor of The Baltimore Sun, about the possibility of his taking the post.

But then the Tribune Company purchased Times Mirror, the parent

company of the Los Angeles Times, and offered Carroll the editorship

there.

Carroll spent a "couple of sleepless nights" and then decided to take himself out of the running for the Nieman job.

Carroll started at the Times on April 24. Four days later, on April 28, at the Nieman Fellows reunion, Kovach declared the Foundation curatorship "ready for an upgrade," but did not, as he had hoped, have the new curator by his side.