Mr. Nessen may have drawn the most attention to himself by being the first from outside the entertainment world to host television’s “Saturday Night Live.”

He pledged a new era of openness in the wake of the Watergate scandal, but his relationship with the press corps proved rocky.

Ron Nessen, a veteran broadcast journalist who was press secretary for President Gerald Ford and sought to restore the integrity that the position had lost during the Nixon administration, has died. He was 90.