The Maine Press Association will add three new members to its hall of fame in October, including longtime Portland Press Herald reporter and editor Dieter Bradbury.

The other new members are Judy Meyer, executive editor of the Sun Journal in Lewiston, and the late Dorothy “Dot” Roderick, who had been an advertising executive with the Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. The three will be inducted Oct. 23 during the association’s annual fall conference, according to a news release from the MPA.

Dieter Bradbury Photo by Jack Milton

Bradbury was deputy managing editor of the Press Herald when he retired this month. He started his career as a part-time reporter for the Press Herald’s afternoon paper, the Evening Express, in 1980 and two years later was hired full-time to cover police news for the Press Herald. Later, he became the environmental reporter.

Bradbury became an editor at the newspaper in 2001 and was promoted to deputy managing editor in 2012. In that role, he oversaw several of the newspaper’s major projects, including the 2017 series “Lost,” about Maine’s opioid epidemic. He also was in charge of the 2012 series “Deadly Force,” investigating police shootings, and the 2014 series “The Challenge of Our Age,” which examined issues facing Maine’s aging population.

Judy Meyer Photo by Andree Kehn

Meyer started working for the Sun Journal as a freelancer in the paper’s Norway bureau and, in 1996, was hired as bureau chief. In 1998, she became the newspaper’s editorial page editor and, five years later, was named daytime managing editor. In 2016, she became the Sun Journal’s executive editor after Rex Rhoades retired.

Besides her duties with the Sun Journal, Meyer is also executive editor of the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal newspapers in central Maine, and oversees a half dozen weekly newspapers in western Maine. She played a major role in creating the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition, a group advocating for improving Maine’s open meeting and public record laws.

Dot Roderick Photo courtesy of Maine Press Association

Roderick, one of the first women advertising executives in the newspaper business, began working for the Morning Sentinel in 1937 before transferring to Portland to work for the Press Herald, Evening Express and Maine Sunday Telegram. She became national ad manager in 1956, working with advertisers across the country. Roderick retired in 1980. She died in 2020 at the age of 101.

The MPA’s hall of fame was established in 1998 to honor newspaper professionals with ties to Maine who have made major contributions to the industry. A list of the members can be seen at mainepressassociation.org.