Legendary journalist and former White House press secretary Bill Moyers, 91, who studied journalism at North Texas in the 1950s, died June 26 in New York.

Moyers served as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s press secretary and won two Pulitzer Prizes as publisher of Long Island newspaper Newsday before becoming a chief correspondent for CBS Reports and senior news analyst for The CBS Evening News. For many years he produced programs for public television, such as the popular Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and his critically acclaimed weekly series, Bill Moyers Journal.

Moyers’ journalism career began when he was a teenager working at The Marshall News Messenger in East Texas and covering sports for his high school newspaper. Arriving at North Texas as a freshman in 1952, he studied journalism under C.S. Shuford and was a staffer for the Campus Chat student newspaper. He also worked for the college’s news service as sports publicity director and reporter, and he served as freshman and sophomore class president and president of the Press Club.

When Moyers received UNT’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1977, he said, “My whole life has been shaped by my two years there, even as what I do today is a reflection, evidence, a proof, confirmation, reminder that education once begun in the mind and heart of a solitary individual … is a constantly renewing, expanding experience.” He was named the first member of North Texas’ C.E. Shuford Hall of Honor in 1982, and UNT awarded him an honorary Doctor of Journalism in 1988.

While a student at North Texas, Moyers wrote a letter to then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson and soon found himself serving a summer internship in Johnson’s Washington office. At the senator’s urging, Moyers took a job at KTBC, the radio/television station the Johnsons owned in Austin, and finished his bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas. He earned a master’s in divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth before returning to Washington to serve as Johnson’s aide. He then worked on the planning for President John F. Kennedy’s new Peace Corps and was appointed its deputy director at age 28 in 1963.

When Kennedy was assassinated later that year, Moyers flew from Dallas to Washington on Air Force One with the newly sworn-in President Johnson and became his special assistant and later press secretary. He resigned in 1967 to take over as publisher of Newsday, and then moved on to his storied broadcast career.

Leaving CBS in 1986, Moyers formed his own production company, Public Affairs Television. His wife and creative partner — North Texas classmate Judith Davidson, whom he’d married in 1954 — joined him as executive producer, and his interview series with Joseph Campbell was among their first releases. Later projects included the weekly PBS public affairs program NOW, a new edition of Bill Moyers Journal, the weekly interview show Moyers & Company and the podcast Moyers On Democracy. He also wrote many best-selling books through the years.

The day of his death, Two American Families: 1991-2024 — a Frontline documentary he’d filmed over 30 years with producers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes — won an Emmy for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. Casciato recalls him coming into the studio last year to record the documentary’s final narration.

Over the course of Moyers’ career, he won more than 30 Emmys and multiple Peabody Awards, George Polk Awards and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Gold Batons for excellence in broadcast journalism. Other honors included the PEN USA Courageous Advocacy Award for his passionate commitment to freedom of speech and journalistic integrity, a National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Television Hall of Fame.

Many of his shows are available to stream for free at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.