Five Questions with Brian O'Connor

Brian O’Connor, personal finance editor and columnist at The Detroit News, talks with Ashley Macha about the challenges of mixing business and fun in his column, Money & Life. For his column, O’Connor incorporates the use of characters, based on real people in his life, to articulate a story or idea. He recently won third place in the large newspaper humor column category for the second year in a row from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

1. How did you get into business journalism?
My first real job in daily journalism was as a copy editor and writer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. I did not have a huge background in business then, but I had a marketing column and I did a column about weird things, where I wrote about a guy who sold dolls that looked like bombs, among other things. It ended up turning into the weirdo beat.

2. How did you decide to combine personal finance with humor? Did working with unusual topics in your column at the Sun-Sentinel have an influence?
Yes, my work there did help lead to the column I have now. I spent a bunch of time on business stuff in South Florida where you see predictable finance copy on the wire; credit cards, mortgages and loans. When I got the column at the News, I decided it couldn’t be one of those money nannies or latte police pieces (i.e. ‘If everyone wouldn’t spend $4 a day at Starbucks, then you would save X amount.’) You wind up with the basics. You end up with a food section telling people how to make muffins every week. You need to make this stuff interesting and entertaining...What I'm hoping to do is catch somebody enough off guard that they will say, 'Oh, this is not that threatening.'

[The column] is a good outlet for someone who has been a lifelong smart alec.

3. Do you find that your column is well accepted?
I’ve never gotten any complaints, but you have to be careful. It’s really hard to use humor in newspapers. Readership is old and editors are nervous about that.

4. How do you stay fresh and always bring a humorous angle?
It’s really impossible sometimes. You go through particular dry spells. I’ll sit down to write a column and it will be great, but one of the things I’m looking for is the timing and how relevant it is. The Eliot Spitzer column is a real accomplishment.  It was a time to talk about bank secrecy and suspicious activity and what happens with all that. I got to make hooker jokes about Spitzer. (‘It ain’t the honey that’s the trouble; it’s the money.) 

5. Where do you see yourself in the future?
I do a Tuesday column about economics that is more explanatory. You have to be careful [about] having a balance between giving them something useful, and just yucking it up to give them something amusing.  I’m not trying to be The Onion of business reporting, but the business reporting with a little bit of The Onion. I think if you are using humor you are less on the pedestal of lecturing people. [You] have to set the bar pretty low to make people feel comfortable. That may be the theme for a lot of columns for me.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism