Robert John Hughes (28 April 1930 – 14 December 2022) was a British-born American journalist, a 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.

Hughes has written two books and for years wrote a nationally syndicated column for The Christian Science Monitor.

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 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 United States and began working in Boston for The Christian Science Monitor.

Back in Orleans, the joke among editors and reporters in the Cape Cod Oracle newsroom was, "poor John Hughes: he can't hold down a job for more than six months," according to Dwight Shepard, who Hughes tapped to be the editor of his weeklies while he was in Washington.

Hughes was then asked by The Christian Science Monitor to be in charge of a shortwave radio international program.

The partnership was unsuccessful and short-lived, resulting in the paper being resold, which enabled Hughes to accept further administrative appointments.

In 1991, he was asked to chair President George H. W. Bush's bipartisan Task Force on the future of US government international broadcasting.

Hughes then accepted an offer from Brigham Young University (BYU) to begin the International Media Study Program.

BYU granted Hughes a year leave of absence, and he became an Assistant Secretary General and Director of Communications at the United Nations.

[3] In 1996, Neal A. Maxwell called Hughes with concerns about the Deseret News, a secular newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In 2014, he published an autobiography, Paper Boy to Pulitzer, which he said he wrote for his children and grandchildren, and because “I thought I had a love story in me, and it’s about journalism.