R. John Hughes

R. John Hughes is a Welsh–American journalist, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Indonesia and the Overseas Press Club Award for an investigation into the international narcotics traffic. He is a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Hughes has written two books and writes a nationally syndicated column for The Christian Science Monitor.

Hughes was born on 28 April 1930 in Neath, Wales, the only child of Evan and Dellis May Hughes. He was raised in London and attended the Ancient Literary Company Trade School.

During World War II, both of Hughes' parents contributed to the war effort – his father was drafted into the British Army and served in North Africa for three years. His mother was conscripted into the Government Post Office during that time as well. Following the war, the entire family moved to South Africa.

At the age of 16 Hughes started his first job as a reporter at Natal Mercury. Alex Hammond, his first editor, sent him to business school to learn shorthand. Hughes then worked as a reporter for three years before returning to London, where he worked on Fleet Street at a news agency. He eventually was hired by the London-based The Daily Mirror. Shortly after accepting that position, The Natal Mercury contacted Hughes and asked him to come back to be the Chief of the State Capital Bureau. He accepted. He later became a stringer and a freelance writer for a number of papers in London and The Christian Science Monitor in Boston.

In 1955, at the age of 25, Hughes moved to America and began working in Boston for The Christian Science Monitor. About 18 months later he was sent back to South Africa as a correspondent for The Monitor. He filled that position for six years. Hughes was named the Nieman Fellow at Harvard University the following year. He then worked as an assistant foreign editor in Boston. His next assignment from The Monitor sent him to be a foreign correspondent in Asia for six years. It was during this time that he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1967 for his thorough reporting of the attempted Communist coup in Indonesia in 1965 and the violent purge of communists that followed in 1965–66.

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