Bloomberg's John Hughes Elected National Press Club President

John Hughes of Bloomberg News has been elected president of the National Press Club, the world's leading professional organization for journalists.

Hughes is an editor for Bloomberg First Word, the breaking-news desk in Washington. Before that he was Bloomberg's aviation and transportation reporter for more than a decade, covering the Sept. 11 attacks, airline and auto bankruptcies and aviation accidents including the Miracle on the Hudson.

Hughes will assume the presidency Jan. 16 and be sworn in Jan. 24 at the Club’s inaugural gala. He is the 108th president of the Club, founded in 1908.

"I am honored and thrilled to be assuming leadership of the Club at such a critical time for our industry," Hughes said. "Protecting press freedom and training journalists have never been more important than they are now."

Most of the voting in the Club election was conducted online. In the journalist membership category, 113 of 142 ballots were cast online. In the communicator category, 60 of 68 votes occurred over the Internet.

Three former Club presidents -- John Cosgrove, Jonathan Salant, Angela Greiling-Keane -- and the incumbent, Myron Belkind, were among the crowd in the Reliable Source toasting Hughes and the other election winners on Dec. 12, when the results were announced.

A native of Mapelwood, Minnesota, Hughes received a B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a Masters at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. He worked at the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin, Small Newspaper Group Washington bureau and The Associated Press in Detroit and Washington before joining Bloomberg in 2000.

Hughes is also co-founder and president of Friends of the Soldiers Home, a non-profit serving veterans of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, and a member of the National Press Club Journalism Institute board.

Also elected were Thomas Burr, Salt Lake City Tribune, vice president; Marc Wojno, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc., treasurer; Andrea Snyder, Bloomberg News, secretary; and Joe Morton, Omaha World-Herald, membership secretary.

Elected to the Board of Governors in the journalist category were Molly McCluskey, freelancer; Ken Mellgren, The Associated Press (retired), and Evan McMorris-Santoro, BuzzFeed. Tom McMahon of Motorola Solutions was elected to the board in the communicator category.