SLCC lauds journalist and former News editor

John Hughes, former editor of the Deseret Morning News and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Salt Lake Community College in recognition of outstanding journalistic accomplishment.

Hughes has served as U.S. assistant secretary of state and as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations. He also writes a nationally syndicated column for the Christian Science Monitor.

In the 24 years he was with the Christian Science Monitor, Hughes was editor of the paper for nine years and ran Monitor Radio. He is currently a professor of communications at Brigham Young University.

Hughes began his career in South Africa for the Natal Mercury. He soon started working for the Christian Science Monitor, which took him to America, Africa and Asia, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Indonesia's political coup and the killing of more than 200,000 Indonesians.

During the Reagan administration, Hughes was tapped, based on his media expertise ande integrity, to run the U.S. Information Agency's Voice of America. He subsequently was named to serve as assistant secretary of state and State Department spokesman.

He chaired the president's bipartisan task force on the future of the U.S. government in international broadcasting. He was later appointed chairman of a joint Presidential-Congressional Commission on Broadcasting to the People's Republic of China.

Hughes was born in Merthyr Tidfyl, Wales. Following his schooling in England, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of two books: "Indonesian Upheaval" and "The New Face of Africa." In addition to his Pulitzer, Hughes has been awarded the Overseas Press Club Award for his work on international narcotics trafficking, and the Yankee Quill Award by Sigma Delta Chi. He is also the recipient of an honorary doctorate of laws from Colby College and an honorary doctorate of humanities from Southern Utah University.