Joseph A. Cannon, who has been a member of the Deseret Morning News Board of Directors since 1996, and whose grandfather and great grandfather before him were editors of the Deseret Morning News, will become editor of the Salt Lake City newspaper, effective January 1. Cannon succeeds John Hughes, who has been editor since 1997.

Cannon's grandfather, Joseph J. Cannon, was editor of the paper from 1931 to 1934, and his great grandfather, George Q. Cannon, was editor from 1867 to 1873, and from 1877 to 1879.

Cannon is an attorney, who has been businessman and government official. He is currently a member of the Committee on Conscience of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has been active in Republican politics, serving as chairman of the Utah Republican party, and on various boards and committees dealing with public policy. In business he was Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Geneva Steel Company in Provo, Utah.

Most recently he has been a partner in the Washington D.C. law firm of Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw and Pittman, specializing in environmental and energy issues.

Cannon served in the Reagan administration as Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

He lives in Provo, Utah, and is married to Janeal Barney Cannon. They have seven children.

Cannon graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in political science in 1974 and a J.D. cum laude in 1977.

Immediately before being appointed editor in 1997, John Hughes was for five years Professor of Journalism and Director of the International Media Studies Program at BYU. He has been on an extended leave of absence from BYU during his time at the Deseret Morning News. He returns to BYU January 1 as Professor of Communications specializing in international communications issues and newspaper management.

He will continue writing a weekly syndicated column for the Christian Science Monitor, of which he was editor from 1970 to 1979. He is a past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

As a foreign correspondent for the Monitor, Hughes won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and the Overseas Press Club's award for best reporting from abroad. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

During a stint in the Reagan administration, Hughes served successively as Associate Director of the U.S. Information Agency, Director of the Voice of America, and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Spokesman in the State Department. He has also chaired presidential and congressional commissions on international broadcasting, and served a one-year term as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.