O'Connor attended
Harvard University during 1932–36 and was the 1935 president of the
Harvard Journal. He graduated with a Bachelors of Science. Returning to California in 1935, he worked for
The Los Angeles Post Record as a reporter and editor. He returned to Harvard to complete one semester of schooling in 1936 and then returned to the
Los Angeles Post Record which then became a 24-hour newspaper called the News where he stayed until late spring 1940. He served as the president of the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild in the late 1930s. In 1940, he moved to
New York and joined the staff of the liberal-leaning newspaper
PM where he worked as city editor among other positions. In 1941, he won the Hayward Brown Memorial Award for series on conditions in the coal mining industry. After
Pearl Harbor, he interviewed American-born Japanese residents of New York and wrote about their disgust at Japanese aggression. He left the paper to serve in the merchant marines for a little less than a year. He joined the
New York Daily Compass in May 1948 as a reporter and went on to become the managing editor. In 1945, he joined
CBS as one of their first television
news anchors. On Thursday, May 22, 1952 O'Connor was called before the
House Un-American Activities Committee after being named first by Charles W. Judson and then by Alice K. Bennett. O'Connor invoked the 5th amendment and didn't name any names. Two months later, on July 24 he died of a heart attack while watching the
Democratic National Convention in his office at the Daily Compass. ==Personal life==