Veteran journalist Robert Moore, the founder of El Paso Matters and former editor of the El Paso Times, is among four people who will be inducted into the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame this summer.

Moore, 61, is the first El Pasoan selected for the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame, and the first to have spent part of his career with a nonprofit news organization.

The 2022 inductees were announced Wednesday. Others selected were George Dolan, a longtime columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Ed Sterling, the retired member services director of the Texas Press Association;  and Greg Schrader, a veteran executive with eight Texas newspapers.

“I have been privileged to be able to help tell the stories of El Paso, a community I have come to love deeply,” Moore said.

The Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame was founded by the Texas Press Association in 2007 and has 56 members. The formal induction will be July 29 at the Texas Press Association convention in San Marcos.

Moore began his journalism career in Colorado and joined the El Paso Times in 1986 as an assistant city editor, rising through the ranks to become executive editor, the paper’s No. 2 news leader, in 2001. In 1998, he organized and moderated debates for governor and lieutenant governor – the only time El Paso has hosted political debates for statewide offices.

Robert Moore, center, moderated the 1998 debate between then-Gov. George W. Bush, right, and his Democratic challenger, Garry Mauro. (Photo courtesy of Ruben Ramirez)

In 2005, Moore was named editor of the Fort Collins Coloradoan newspaper. He held that position until 2011, when he returned to El Paso as editor and vice president of news for the Times and a group of papers in New Mexico.

After returning to El Paso, Moore spearheaded a number of major investigative reporting projects, including an examination of a scheme at the El Paso Independent School District to flaunt the state’s accountability system. The Times’ reporting led the state to remove the EPISD school board.

Moore resigned as editor of the El Paso Times in 2017 and began serving as a freelance reporter for national and statewide publications, with a focus on border enforcement and immigration issues.

Robert Moore speaks to CNN about his reporting on the death of a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant in Border Patrol custody.

In 2019, he founded El Paso Matters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news organization. El Paso Matters, which began publishing in February 2020, now has a staff of 12 people that is focused on in-depth and investigative reporting about El Paso and the border region.

Moore’s national journalism awards include the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award from the National Press Foundation, the Burl Osborne Award for Editorial Leadership from the American Society of News Editors, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award as part of a ProPublica reporting team covering failures by the Border Patrol, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist as part of a Washington Post team reporting on the 2019 terrorist shooting at an El Paso Walmart.

He also has won numerous statewide journalism honors from the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, Texas Associated Press Managing Editors and the Texas Press Association.

Moore currently serves on the board of El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank and is a former board member for United Way of El Paso County, the Center Against Sexual and Family Violence and the Child Crisis Center. He is past president of the Colorado Press Association and Texas Associated Press Managing Editors.

He is a 1998 graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso and attended the University of Southern Colorado (now called Colorado State University-Pueblo). Moore has been married for 31 years to fellow journalist Kate Gannon, who is an associate professor of practice in multimedia journalism at UTEP.