John Hughes, editor of the Deseret Morning News, likes to meet newsworthy people. He likes, he says, "to take their measure."
Taking the measure of Hughes, on the other hand, is a task.
Only the foolhardy would play "top this" with him. Brag about your sea cruise and he could — if he wanted — mention the Royal Yacht and The Queen of England. Show him your writing award and he could — if he cared to — display his Pulitzer.
Most of the time, John Hughes holds the trump card. And most of the time, he declines to play it.
That makes him a tough read. It also has made him a fellow "well-met" in places ranging from the working-class cafes of Africa to the White House lawn.
He is discriminating without practicing discrimination, a man of class who doesn't trade on class.
"I was terrified when John Hughes arrived," says Jay Evensen, who, as editor of the Deseret Morning News editorial page, met with Hughes almost every day. "His credentials were incredibly impressive, and he had won a Pulitzer Prize for writing firsthand about things in Indonesia. Here I was, expected to share with him my ideas on the nation's foreign policy.
"But he never came across as someone who had to prove anything to anyone. From the start, he was gracious and deferential — a teacher, a mentor, willing to send me places where I could learn on my own, always willing to share his many experiences. The past decade has been the greatest learning experience of my life."
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And now, after a decade at the Deseret Morning News, Hughes will be moving on. He's not retiring. His friend, columnist William Safire, advised him to "never retire." He'll simply be shifting south to teach at Brigham Young University.
But his 10 years at the newspaper have been watershed years. The paper is different now than when he arrived. It has a new name. It's a morning paper. It has a growing circulation. But more than that, the paper and its people have a certain focus and self-confidence that bears the Hughes stamp.
Typically, his regret is he couldn't do more.
"Getting the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize would have been nice," Hughes says. "I sat on the Pulitzer jury and know some of the investigations we did got into the top 20, but it's very hard for a regional newspaper with a funny name to win a Pulitzer. There's a lot of politicking."
Born in Wales — a place that has produced more than its share of Utahns — Hughes knew at an early age he would be a man who gets the word out.
"I was about 16 in high school in England," he says, "when the master in chemistry and physics informed me that I probably should not a pursue a career in those fields. However the English teacher said, 'If we clean up your grammar, maybe you should be a writer. That seems to be where you're going."'
And that's where he went.
After studying as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, in 1955 he became the African correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, later moving up to become an assistant foreign editor — winning a Pulitzer Prize for his international reporting before taking the reins as the editor of the paper itself in 1970.
He started writing a column for the Monitor, which he continued to write during his Deseret Morning News tenure. He will keep writing it in the future.
"He's such a legend around the Monitor, one of those luminaries of Monitor history," says Kendra Nordin, who worked on the Christian Science Monitor's opinion page for five years. "He has been a steady presence on the opinion page and is someone we rely on to supply a conservative voice to balance the section."
Nordin added that Hughes "has always felt like family to us at the Monitor, even though he has been the editor of another paper. And despite his legendary status he always graciously accepts what few edits we make to his columns (even from those of us cutting our journalistic teeth!)"
In time, Hughes would slide over to the State Department to do what he calls some "reporting in reverse" — getting the word out to 5,000 correspondents each day. Working for the U.S. government, he formed many of his most enduring and important connections, including friendships with Marvin and Bernie Kalb and George Shultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state. Shultz would become a mentor.
Hughes' many intriguing assignments over that span are worthy of a series of books with titles like "The Radio America Years" or "Newshound at the United Nations." Eventually he took a post at BYU in the early 1990s ("masquerading as a professor of journalism," he says).
He was at the United Nations when he got a call from Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Maxwell said there was a little committee examining the Deseret News that wanted him to weigh in about the paper.
"I was eventually asked to do some consulting," Hughes says. "I talked to everybody on the paper, everybody who had left the paper and talked to a lot of people around town."
One thing led to another until, in 1997, he found himself sitting across the desk from LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.
"My wife Peggy and I went together to see him," Hughes says. "By the questions he'd asked me before, I knew he was one of the most extraordinarily astute observers of the press I'd known. And the discussion went very well. Then, as respectfully as I could, I said, 'Might you not be making a mistake putting a non-Mormon in this slot?' He said, 'No. You've lived among us, you understand us and we trust you.' That nailed it."
In his consultant role at the Deseret News, Hughes says he had found the paper to have a special kind of mission. It seemed, he says, "to be a newspaper interested in improving the lot of its readers. And a newspaper can be an amazing instrument for good if it's on the right track. I thought it would be an interesting challenge."
The first task for the newly minted chief operating officer was taking the paper morning. But that was just one challenge. He also saw a lot of unnecessary self-censorship on the staff and a flawed perception among readers that the fingerprints of the LDS Church appeared on every page.
Just his being hired eased many concerns. And the heartfelt plaudits at his leaving show he can look back with some satisfaction.
"John Hughes came to the Deseret Morning News with the highest credentials in the field of journalism, even a Pulitzer Prize," said Thomas S. Monson, first counselor in the LDS Church's First Presidency. "He shared his talents freely with his fellow journalists at the News and earned their respect. He has a natural instinct for discovering newsworthy topics and events and converting them into inspired newspaper columns. He also has the ability to teach and to help others develop their skills."
Adds Rick Hall, managing editor of the Deseret Morning News: "Two things come to mind about John's years here. He taught us all that only excellence is acceptable and that our First Amendment rights must always be connected to journalistic responsibility. He instilled those things here and did it with a remarkably warm and human touch."
Needless to say, Hughes will take those qualities back to BYU when he resumes teaching there next fall.
"It's the right time to go," he says. "I'm sad to be leaving because it's so much fun and so gratifying to watch people at the Deseret Morning News turn out the wonderful things they do. We have a terrific staff — very talented writers, photographers and artists. I'd put them up against some of the great newspapers in the country."
He said that if the paper has improved, it's not because people were fired, as has been the case at other papers around the country, "but because people have been able to find their niche."
As a professor, he plans to keep filling those niches.
"Maybe I'll be teaching a few future Deseret Morning News journalists," he says.
And maybe he'll teach the children — and maybe the grandchildren — of those journalists.
What was it the man said?
Never retire.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com