Columnist Brian O'Connor earns 2nd humor prize

For the second year in a row, one of the funniest columnists in the country hails from The Detroit News.

Detroit News Personal Finance Editor Brian J. O'Connor won third place for humor columns in large newspapers at the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Saturday in New Orleans.

O'Connor, whose column runs Saturdays and Tuesdays, was honored for three pieces, including one that somehow related personal finance to a series of events involving his wife's Swedish relatives, her auto registration, Cinco de Mayo and a New York attic filled with bat guano.

You can read those columns here or on the Columnists page of the Opinion section at www.detnews.com.

The judge was Ruth Butler, an editor at the Grand Rapids Press who wrote that O'Connor, "makes finance fun. You're smiling and before you know it a potentially dry subject has become informative and entertaining."

O'Connor has been penning his column since May 2005. He is a 1978 graduate of the Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills and holds a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College. O'Connor also earned a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University as a 2001 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business.