Ray Dyer, a third generation publisher of the El Reno Tribune, is the new president of the Oklahoma Press Association.

Dyer was appointed by the OPA Board of Directors to serve from January 1, 2019, through June 30, 2019, and will then be nominated for membership consideration and election for his scheduled year of 2019-2020.

Dyer succeeds Brian Blansett, publisher of the Tri-County Herald, as president. Blansett will serve as past president for six months.

Dyer was born in 1957 in El Reno and other than working at the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, Ark., and the McAlester News Capital & Democrat he has spent his life working at the family-owned Tribune.

The son of Pat Dyer and the late Jack Dyer, he follows in the footsteps of his grandfather, Ray J. Dyer, his father Jack and brother Sean Dyer in serving as board president for OPA.

Ray Dyer started working at the age of 12 throwing the then Daily Tribune. By his freshmen year in high school he was working in the production and pressroom of the paper.

A member of the Oklahoma City Gridiron Club for more than a decade, Dyer was named in 2010 to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame.

A member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Reno, Dyer also served for 12 years as editor of the Sooner Catholic, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City.

“I think we in the newspaper industry have an obligation to hold our government leaders and our institutions accountable; at the same time we need to hold ourselves accountable. Oklahoma, in my opinion, is in need of tremendous reforms. I believe Oklahoma newspapers should be leading the charge in calling for many of these reforms,” Dyer said. “If we will do this, I believe the people of our great state will take notice and they will benefit. If they benefit, we will benefit.”