On Thursday, April 2, 2026 at the annual Eastern Echo Student Media Gala and Hall of Fame Banquet, The Eastern Echo will induct journalist and editor Larry O'Connor, along with two other Echo alumni, to its Hall of Fame.
Described by Eastern Echo and Detroit News colleague James Russ as a "Jack of all trades and master of them all," O'Connor has covered a range of topics in journalism, from arts and entertainment to police and crime stories. However, one reporting beat has echoed throughout his entire career: sports.
O'Connor, who served as sports editor at The Echo from 1982-84, has been an avid sports fan since a young age, and found it to be his entryway into journalism.
"I played baseball. I played hockey. I played soccer," O'Connor said. "In high school, I used to work at Tiger Stadium as a junior usher; you wiped seats with the hope of getting tips. And then I eventually got to work in the visitors' clubhouse as a clubhouse attendant. So, all these guys I looked up to — like baseball stars and stuff — I was actually in the locker room, seeing them up close and personal, so to speak. ... It was like a dream job at the time."
O'Connor's early love for sports proved integral to his journalistic work on the sports copy desk later at The Detroit News, where he worked from 2011-2021, Russ said.
"Larry had a vast reservoir of sports knowledge. He grew up in this area and stayed in the area for most of his life and was a sports fan from a young age, and so he was especially valuable to us in the sports department because of that," Russ said. "I always appreciated the fact that I could ask Larry something about the Tigers or the Lions or basically anything having to do with local sports and he would ... more times than not, he would know the answer."
Growing up, O'Connor worked at his junior high school's newspaper, where his passion for journalism began. He graduated from Wayne Memorial High School in Wayne, Michigan in 1980. During his high school career, he served as managing editor of his school's paper and wrote feature stories for a professional soccer team in Detroit called Detroit Express.
"This goes back to gumption. I never told them I wasn't in college, or I was still in high school — and I was writing features for their program," O'Connor said. He would send the stories he wrote to his mentor, Kevin Allen, who worked at a daily paper in Arizona at the time. Allen, also an Eastern Echo alum, nominated O'Connor for the Hall of Fame this year.
When O'Connor attended EMU, The Echo offices were located in Goodison Hall, he said. Today, The Echo offices are in King Hall.
"I loved working at The Echo. In fact, the old office — I'm sure you don't have it — in Goodison Hall. ... it was a wide open place. You know, people smoked. People yelled at each other. People laughed. And we had so many characters," O'Connor said. "It was a safe haven. If you were bored in your dorm room or something, you could always go and hang out at The Echo."
At The Echo, O'Connor's first beat was covering women's basketball, just ten years after Title IX passed, prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding, including athletics.
O'Connor's college days were busy. In addition to working at The Echo and taking classes, he also held down a student supervisor job at one of the campus dining halls and freelanced for the Detroit Free Press.
"They had me as a paid correspondent, and I'd call them every day, and tell them what was going on with the football team, or the basketball team. In some instances, they actually had me cover games for the Free Press. And I can't tell you what a thrill it was," O'Connor said. "Back then, the Free Press on Sundays, they had an early edition. It was called the Bulldog edition. They would come out on Saturday nights. I covered a game down in Muncie, Indiana — Eastern Michigan played Ball State in football — and I came back, and I went to the party store; after the long bus ride, I came back, and there was a Free Press out. I opened it up and there was my story."
In college, O'Connor majored in political science and minored in journalism — a program not yet offered as a major at the time. At EMU, he met his wife, who also worked at the dining hall with him, and asked her out during their last week on campus.
"She's been along for the whole ride; 40 years ... the whole journalism business with me," he said.
After he graduated, O'Connor worked as a part-time sports writer at a publication called The Observer and Eccentric, where he was named Journalist of the Year in 1989. He also worked as a staff writer at the Jackson Citizen Patriot, where he covered sports, lifestyle, entertainment, news and business as a general assignment reporter.
Working at The Echo opened up doors of opportunity and helped O'Connor build his confidence as a journalist, he said.
"Another thing it gave me is gumption. Nobody ever told me no. You know, if I wanted to do a story, nobody said, 'No, you can't do that story. Oh, no, you couldn't do that — you don't have the experience.' Nobody ever told me no," he said. "When I went to my first job, which was at the Observer and Eccentric newspaper ... if there was a story to be done, I just went and did it, and the editors liked my gumption."
Throughout the various publications O'Connor worked at, he found his success was not limited to sports writing, and he covered all sorts of stories, including music journalism. O'Connor interviewed Chad Smith, who went on to be a drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, wrote about pop band The Fine Young Cannibals, and reported on other artists in the local music scene.
After a break from journalism to return to school and work as a computer technician, he was offered a job as a copy editor at the Detroit News in 2011.
"When I was a kid, I always wanted to work for one of the two major daily newspapers in Detroit," he said. "I used to deliver the Detroit News as a kid."
His position reunited him with his former Eastern Echo colleague, Russ, sports editor at the Detroit News who was working as the assistant sports editor at the time.
"The best thing about working with Larry is that he was so knowledgeable in sports, but also had very strong editing and web producing skills that he was kind of like a do-it-all type person in the sports department," Russ said. "You could trust Larry to do some excellent editing on a story. He was very technically proficient."
The sports department at the Detroit News often sees late-night sports stories and breaking news, Russ said. O'Connor regularly worked late hours with the speed and skills necessary to bring stories to the public quickly, he said. O'Connor's talents made the lives of everyone he worked with easier, Russ said.
"He always had a good sense of humor and he always had great stories to tell," Russ said. "It was a pleasure to work with Larry."
Now, O'Connor is completing his master's degree with hopes of working in special education, with a focus on students on the autism spectrum. In the meantime, he has been working as a substitute teacher and paraprofessional in classrooms.
"I have always come from the belief that everybody has a story to tell, and everybody has a gift — everybody," O'Connor said. "That's the way I approach working with the kids."
In addition to O'Connor, the 2026 inductees to The Eastern Echo Hall of Fame include author and Axios business reporter Nathan Bomey and former Ann Arbor Observer assistant editor and MSN news editor Sally Day Wright. All three will be inducted on Thursday, April 2, 2026, at The Echo's Student Media Gala and Hall of Fame Banquet, which will be hosted in the McKenny Hall Ballroom at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are available online and at the door.
