AADL Talks To: Steve Culver, Publisher of the LGBTQ+ focused Magazine Out Post

Sun, 08/04/2024 - 11:00am

When: July 25, 2024

In this episode, AADL Talks To Steve Culver. Steve first visited Ann Arbor in his early 20s, and soon began his publishing career in Ann Arbor at the Ann Arbor News. In 1990, he released the first issue of his LGBTQ-focused publication Ten Percent, which later became the Michigan Tribune and finally Out Post. Steve reflects on 34 ½ years of covering Ann Arbor & Southeast Michigan’s queer community, how his publication has changed over the years, and broader changes in Ann Arbor’s social scene.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] HEIDI MORSE: [MUSIC] Hi, this is Heidi.
• [00:00:11] ELIZABETH SMITH: And this is Elizabeth. In this episode, AADL talks to Steve Culver. Steve first visited Ann Arbor in his early 20s and soon began his publishing career in Ann Arbor at the Ann Arbor News. In 1990, he released the first issue of his LGBTQ focused publication Ten Percent, which later became the Michigan Tribune and finally Out Post. Steve reflects on 34 and a half years of covering Ann Arbor and Southeast Michigan's queer community, how his publication has changed over the years and broader changes in Ann Arbor's social scene. [MUSIC].
• [00:00:45] ELIZABETH SMITH: Thank you for joining us today, Steve. Usually, we just start out by asking, where did you grow up and what brought you to Ann Arbor?
• [00:00:52] STEVE CULVER: Good to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I grew up in Western Wayne County actually, and I discovered Ann Arbor soon after high school. I guess I was like, 20 years old. I started to hang out here downtown like many youths do. That was a period for me where there wasn't a whole lot else going on in my life at that time.
• [00:01:15] ELIZABETH SMITH: Where were some of the spots you liked to hang out when you first started coming to Ann Arbor?
• [00:01:19] STEVE CULVER: Well, I was by myself at that point, like I said, I wasn't out. I didn't know any other gay people. Like I say, it was a tough period there. I would just come downtown and explore what I thought at the time was a big city. I remember seeing the two story McDonald's on Maynard Street, as well as the Burger King at the corner of Maynard and Liberty. Neither one had a drive through and to me, that's just signal, this is a big city. It's not a strip mall or a suburb where I grew up.
• [00:01:55] ELIZABETH SMITH: How did you first get established here? You worked at the Ann Arbor News, is that your first job here?
• [00:02:01] STEVE CULVER: I did. I worked at a small paper in my hometown, and so when I came to Ann Arbor and realized there was a daily newspaper, I thought, this is my dream job. This was a fall of '86 that I started coming to Ann Arbor, and I would actually go to the Ann Arbor News reception desk in the lobby and ask if they were hiring. I did that maybe once a month from the fall of '86 and finally, in the following spring, I got at first a part time job and then turned into a full time job.
• [00:02:36] HEIDI MORSE: You're persistent?
• [00:02:38] STEVE CULVER: Well, I just fell in love with Ann Arbor, and I had already got the newspaper bug, the journalism bug, and so I had ink in my veins, and so I thought, put the two together, and working at the Ann Arbor News was a dream for me.
• [00:02:53] HEIDI MORSE: What was your role there when you got hired?
• [00:02:55] STEVE CULVER: Throughout my whole journalism, career, I've been in the design or production or--at the Ann Arbor News, they called it the "back shop." I wasn't a reporter or editor in the newsroom per se. But at the Ann Arbor News, actually, I did work in the newsroom, but as a production person. Back then, this was pre-desktop publishing, so it's cutting and pasting and keylining, as they called it then.
• [00:03:20] ELIZABETH SMITH: You mentioned that you had an interest in journalism before that. When did that first begin and did you always know, like as a teenager, that that's what you wanted to do?
• [00:03:29] STEVE CULVER: I was on my high school yearbook staff, or actually, for that matter even middle school, I was on the yearbook staff. I've been a one trick pony and publications has been my trick so I caught the bug early and have it ever since.
• [00:03:44] ELIZABETH SMITH: You after the Ann Arbor News went to the Michigan Daily, is that correct?
• [00:03:48] STEVE CULVER: Not directly, actually. While I was at the Ann Arbor News for 3 and half years or so, they did start teaching us desktop publishing. Then that really caught my eye. By that time I had come out, and I thought, what if I do a desktop publishing, you can create your own publication and so I did that, and that's how I started what was then known as Ten Percent, which was just a 12 page newsletter that I was doing after hours at the Ann Arbor News. Some folks probably wondered what I was doing there, but they figured I was teaching myself how to do desktop publishing so they figured, let him do what he wants, and then I took that to the Kinko's that was above that Burger King at the corner of Maynard and Liberty and the first issue in January of 1990, I think it was 300 copies I made and distributed them around town. It was combining my new coming out experiences with my newspaper experiences and melding those two together.
• [00:04:50] HEIDI MORSE: So you went from not being out to publishing a queer newspaper, basically. Can you talk about how that happened?
• [00:04:56] STEVE CULVER: I guess I skipped over the coming out part in Ann Arbor. At least, I spent several months in late '86 or early '87, just discovering Ann Arbor, like I said, by myself. I've had heard about the Nectarine Ballroom, which is now known as Necto, but it took me several months to get up the nerve to go there. At that time, I was 21, but I hadn't been in any bars so I did not have a social life at all. Like I said, the two years out of high school were very lonely, actually. I was taking college classes part time, and so it was very difficult, and then on Tuesday, June 2, 1987, is the first time I went to the Nectarine Ballroom and that changed my life. Back then, and certainly before then, LGBT bars were the backbone of the social life for a lot of LGBT people. Back then it was, they called it boys night out, and it was a Tuesday nights and they would get 1,000 people, 1,000 young gay men, some out, some not out, who would come to the Nectarine on Tuesday night. Within weeks, I was meeting all kinds of people left and right, and it just completely changed my life for the better.
• [00:06:22] ELIZABETH SMITH: You also mentioned that you briefly worked there. What was that experience like? [LAUGHTER]
• [00:06:26] STEVE CULVER: Yes. It turns out, one of the first people I met at the Nectarine was the DJ who happened to be the entertainment writer at the Ann Arbor News. That's a Roger LeLievre, iconic figure in Ann Arbor, and I think it was maybe my third time there, the second week, I ran into a coworker at the bar and that just spiraled exponentially, you meet people, and then you meet more people. It was just a crazy summer for that, such a huge change for me. Even just a few months later, then I was working there. That was just for maybe a year or so, but still friends with a lot of those folks that I first met that first summer of being out.
• [00:07:13] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious about the publication Ten Percent and how you chose the name for that.
• [00:07:18] STEVE CULVER: Back then, I don't know how common it was, but there was a figure that 10% of the population is LGBT. I don't know where that came from, but to me actually, I don't remember exactly how I came up with that particular name at that particular time, but that's where the Ten Percent came from at least, from that common figure. That was the first one was a 12 page newsletter that Roger LeLievre wrote a little music column. I was also acquainted at the time with the programming office at U of M, which now is called the Spectrum Center. Back then, I was LGBT, if I remember correctly, LGBT Lesbian Gay programming office or--they had many names, many iterations, and that was Jim Toy, of course, the iconic Jim Toy, and Billie Edwards. They really liked my publication or the idea or the potential, I think is really the potential to have something like that. They were very supportive in the beginning. Quickly, I stuck with it. It was a monthly in the beginning and I went from getting it printed at Kinko's to getting it printed on newsprint, when I found out how I could do that, which boy, I just thought that was great. I'm printing on newsprint, and now I'm a real newspaper. Those are the early days and how I fell into this.
• [00:08:41] HEIDI MORSE: Had you heard of any other local LGBTQ publications, whether they were happening at the time or in previous decades?
• [00:08:49] STEVE CULVER: At the time I didn't. I had been out for maybe two years and so at the time, there were many bars in Detroit and the city of Detroit, and there were two publications that were basically night life magazines, bar magazines if you will. Those were the only two publications active at that time and that's why after starting in Ann Arbor, soon expanded to the Metro Detroit area, and later found out that there certainly were publications that preceded mine that were more news focused, and I just continued that legacy.
• [00:09:27] ELIZABETH SMITH: What were you focused on in your early issues? What did you typically include in an issue? I know you had a horoscope column later on, and you mentioned Roger had written.
• [00:09:38] STEVE CULVER: As with any newspaper, I knew early on that, a newspaper has different things that, some people will like this, some people will like that. The goal isn't, as far as a publisher, I've always thought that a goal isn't to get every reader to like every thing you put in the paper. It's to get them to like something that you put in, and whether that be a horoscope or a music column or the local news. The local news part is what was at my heart from the beginning, working at a small local newspaper growing up and then the Ann Arbor News. It's just the local news has always been in my blood, and so that's what I often focused on.
• [00:10:19] ELIZABETH SMITH: Did that change or evolve over time, or did it stay pretty consistent?
• [00:10:23] STEVE CULVER: Well, that's a great question because it did evolve over time. I just last month, finished my last issue. I retired from publishing, which is an amazing thing I'm still getting used to. But in that 34.5 years since I started publishing, the publication certainly did change, change the name twice--to Out Post--first to Michigan Tribune, which is probably the worst mistake I ever made. But then also Out Post. Definitely evolved. There was a chunk of time in the middle of that 34 years where it was more of a night life magazine, just for the economics of it. At the time, it made sense to cater to that segment of the population. But I eventually came back to the local news because that's where my heart lies.
• [00:11:12] ELIZABETH SMITH: When you first initially got the publication out, how did you get word out and get readership?
• [00:11:18] STEVE CULVER: Good question. I distributed, like say, I think it was 300 copies, and just in the downtown campus area. One of the I don't know, I think it was a third issue or so. I remember one of those newsprint issues, one of the first ones, I had an advertiser who advertised a calendar that they published, and it was a guys from U of M. Well, caused a bit of a controversy, because most of those guys at U of M didn't know that they were going to be advertised in a LGBT publication, they went around town confiscating my publication. I hadn't published more than three or four issues when--the first time it was confiscated, and that caused a minor stir, and I'm not sure if other publications picked up on that story or not. But it certainly became known. Also over time, early on, I was not afraid to write about different I don't know, controversies or sensitive topics. That certainly gets people's attention as well.
• [00:12:17] ELIZABETH SMITH: I saw the U of M student and the calendar in the Michigan Daily, that was one of our questions.
• [00:12:23] STEVE CULVER: Yeah, I do remember that turned into a mini little thing, and it was just a miscommunication. I ended up, I did get a lot of the papers back, and I redistributed them. But yeah, that was just one of many crazy little stories over the 34 years.
• [00:12:43] ELIZABETH SMITH: I think it might have even been the first issue where there was a WCBN--anti LGBTQ sentiment written in the office, and that caused a little bit of controversy.
• [00:12:53] STEVE CULVER: Absolutely, yeah. It was that very first issue. Oftentimes, in those early days, you're writing about a lot of discrimination, and at times it could be very negative. To counter that, I also over time, like to include some of the lighter stuff in there as well. But yeah, I've always been a big proponent of, sunshine and letting transparency and letting things out in the open.
• [00:13:23] HEIDI MORSE: Can you talk more about the reception of the publication? We were covering that. But how did that change over time? Did you see your readership changing, any controversial issues changing or shifting over time?
• [00:13:35] STEVE CULVER: One of the big stories I had early on was a big controversy in Adrian, Michigan, just a little southwest of Ann Arbor, smaller town that had a big scandal involving closeted men meeting each other in the woods in a public park. I wasn't the one who got that story initially. It was the Arbor News, but because the Ann Arbor News is what it is, their story on that appeared on an inside page that didn't attract a lot of attention. Because I was focusing on the LGBT community. That was my front page article, and that is what got student activists from Ann Arbor interested in that issue, and that turned into a huge thing and the protests and Adrian. Again, it was a matter of being focused on a particular issue and getting people's attention. Later on in the '90s, we found that, mainstream publications really wanted to start to cover the LGBT community, and they would often look to the gay press to pick up stories. Sometimes they credited us, sometimes they didn't, but oftentimes I saw that we would do a story, and then it would eventually find its way to the mainstream press.
• [00:14:55] ELIZABETH SMITH: There was some initial criticism that the publication was geared specifically towards a gay male audience. Did this evolve and change over time? Was it a publication for the whole LGBTQ community?
• [00:15:06] STEVE CULVER: That was a critique after the very first issue. I've certainly learned that you cannot please everyone all the time. That's a futile goal, if you have it. We certainly try to diversify the voices in the paper over the years. Yet, we also realize that we just aren't qualified to cover some things. There were other publications along the way, and I never tried to be everything to everyone, because that's just not possible. I don't know. I think it'd be arrogant to think that you could. We did what we could and served the portion of the community that we thought we could serve well. That also included geographically. Initially, I kept on expanding to even Toledo and out state Michigan and realized that was a mistake. You just can't spread yourself so thin. I reined that in and came back to concentrating on Metro Detroit and Ann Arbor, of course.
• [00:16:10] HEIDI MORSE: Can you talk about the mechanics of distributing the paper? Like, were you bringing it to places physically? Were you mailing it out? What were the places.
• [00:16:20] STEVE CULVER: Absolutely. I was a paper boy until last month, the last issue, so I would always joke that, I've got my paper route to go on. But over the years, I also worked even though I kept my publication a very small operation, I never wanted to be a manager of people and have a large staff and miss out on the fun of actually doing the work of reporting and taking photos. But I did work with a lot of freelance people, including delivery people over the years. That can be a two day, three day job to get up, distribute everything and wake up early and meet delivery people. It was a whole operation. To me, I like getting out and about delivering the paper because, oftentimes you're just stuck at your computer terminal and doing the work. The delivery day, you got to be out and about and visit people, and it might even take longer than you need to just to chat with folks. It would be make for a very long day, but it's good to get out and see people.
• [00:17:25] HEIDI MORSE: Was it like bookstores, bars?
• [00:17:28] STEVE CULVER: Sure.
• [00:17:28] ELIZABETH SMITH: Individual homes.
• [00:17:30] STEVE CULVER: All of the above. There used to be a lot more. Borders Bookstores was a big one for us, and then of course, they went away, and that happened several times over independent movie theaters in Metro Detroit that are no longer around. During the pandemic, it really became an issue because so many places were not open. That's when I thought, Well, how can we reach people and one way to just offer a free subscription, literally free. There's costs involved in distributing the paper in any form or fashion, whether you're paying delivery people or whatnot. I figured, what the heck? Let's just mail it to people free if they want to. If they've shown interest, and they want to receive it, we'll just mail it to them. We kept that up even after the pandemic right up until last month. That was we had to be more creative over time, and how do we get the paper in people's hands?
• [00:18:28] ELIZABETH SMITH: I'm curious, since you've been covering the community for so long, how has Ann Arbor changed over the years, especially when thinking about the LGBTQ community?
• [00:18:37] STEVE CULVER: That's interesting. Our spaces have certainly changed, where we gather. I started out, I said at Nectarine Ballroom, but before that was a bar called the Rubaiyat, which is a little before my time. Although later on, I found out my gay uncle would come from the city of Detroit to the Rubaiyat so he wouldn't run into any one he knew from downtown Detroit where he lived. Then also, there was the Flame Bar, which was another iconic bar, which is now part of Frita Batidos. That was another space. It is a classic dive bar, if you will. But then in 1995, the community got aut Bar on Braun Court, and for a good 20 years or so, it seemed like Braun Court and aut Bar and its Common Language Bookstore and Jim Toy Community Center were the center of Ann Arbor LGBT community. Of course, we lost those places in the pandemic. Jim Toy Community Center is now virtual. The bookstore is gone, and aut Bar, Keith and Martin the owners of the aut Bar retired, and a well deserved retirement. Aut bar initially was going to be carried on by someone else, but then the pandemic changed that. We're really--the community has really missed out, of course, we still have the Necto for young folks. That's really changed over the years. It changed, and there's other opportunities certainly that there wasn't before. We can meet outside of bar spaces or physical spaces. There's currently the last few years, have been a very popular volleyball league for gay men locally that you wouldn't have dreamed of 30 years ago, but it's a very popular thing. But it seems like the Ann Arbor community is in a state of transition right now as far as physical spaces.
• [00:20:44] ELIZABETH SMITH: You mentioned that you published your last issue of outpost last month. What led to that decision, and what's next?
• [00:20:51] STEVE CULVER: Did I not say it was 34 years? That's why [LAUGHTER].
• [00:20:53] HEIDI MORSE: It's a long time.
• [00:20:57] STEVE CULVER: I've been thinking about it for many years, actually and certainly print has been changing in the media landscape. There are times in that 34 years that I've been completely self employed. There's other times where I've had other irons in the fire at other newspapers. For the past 10 years, I've been working at the University Record, which is a University of Michigan newspaper for staff and faculty. It just seemed like the right time. Actually, last year, I was almost going to pull the plug, and then I thought, well, maybe Pride Month would be a more appropriate way to end it. It was bitter sweet. I did put some time into doing a retrospective last issue, and that was nostalgic. It's still taken some getting used to, though, not having deadlines. I was born with deadlines, and so, bittersweet, but I'm now concentrating on going forward with taking all the archives and all the back issues and donating them to appropriate libraries, including, of course, the Bentley Historical Library at U of M.
• [00:22:04] ELIZABETH SMITH: We would definitely be interested in any copies of that.
• [00:22:07] STEVE CULVER: Of course, the Ann Arbor District library. Yes I have.
• [00:22:10] ELIZABETH SMITH: We would absolutely love that.
• [00:22:14] STEVE CULVER: I have a lot of them. I say, not only back issues, but also newsletters. Every organization used to have their own newsletter, and so I have some really old stuff that's valuable. It's part of our community.
• [00:22:29] ELIZABETH SMITH: You have been at the university record for 10 years, and you're responsible for several aspects of that publication. How is that different or similar to other positions you've held?
• [00:22:40] STEVE CULVER: It's actually much more similar. I thought coming to the university in such a position was like, crossing the divide and jumping to the dark side of marketing from the journalism side. But actually, four or three of the four of my co workers were all ex newspaper people and been through the tumultuous downsizing of newspapers over the years. But we're all newspaper folks. Our little shop is much more like a community newspaper, like even my first community newspaper that I started out at, than I would have imagined it would be. Of course, we are the voice of the university, and so editorially, that there's some big changes. But it's a lot more similar than I would have imagined.
• [00:23:30] HEIDI MORSE: Do you have advice for those who are starting out in the field of journalism now?
• [00:23:36] STEVE CULVER: I could be snarky and say, you know, change professions. But that's interesting. We're actually right next to the Michigan Daily, and we see those folks, and personally, from the production and design standpoint, I really appreciate how they do a lot of editorial design and artwork, and I think that's really great. But it's clearly, obviously, the future is digital and there are different ways to do that. The New York Times is probably the leader in how that's done. But there's still print for the New York Times and other publications. But being able to take advantage of digital and that's something, it's another reason perhaps why I'm a print guy through and through. I saw the writing on the wall as well. I was happy to put Out Post to bed as a print publication and let others carry things forward in different venues.
• [00:24:37] ELIZABETH SMITH: Was there ever an online presence for Out Post?
• [00:24:40] STEVE CULVER: It's funny because I'm probably the only newspaper that hasn't had a website. What we did have is a Facebook page. There was even a time 10, 15 years ago where I would put original articles on Facebook. If you recall, there, even New York Times and other mainstream publications, experimented with putting their material on Facebook as well. Facebook got away from that providing news and they evolved. I did too, because, quite frankly, trying to be a digital first. I was just no profit in doing that for me. I went quite frankly back to being, print first because that's where it made sense to do. But there were times where a lot of articles. I got on Facebook that were original and breaking news, if you will. That was a nice thing, of course, about being able to publish online is you can do it right away. On Facebook, you get the engagement, and there used to be comments and people would carry on a conversation. Even if it's critical, what I published, it's a conversation, and that's what you want. You're not looking to everyone agree with you, you're looking for conversation, and that's what Facebook provided.
• [00:25:58] ELIZABETH SMITH: I was curious if you had any other collaborators that frequently wrote for you, and if you could talk about them a little bit.
• [00:26:04] STEVE CULVER: Now, you're putting me on the spot, I'm trying to remember and not go to leave anybody out. But Jennifer Charney, she wrote very regularly for me, and she was in Ferndale, and she was really plugged into the community and very professional. She was probably the closest I had to a beat reporter that I worked with. There's other times where you get folks who wanted to--everyone wants to write opinion column. That's for sure. Everyone is. There's not enough newsprint to provide everyone who wants to write an opinion column, but Jennifer was a really good reporter. I think that's what stood out, made Out Post stand out is the quality of our reporting.
• [00:26:48] ELIZABETH SMITH: You mentioned the story in Adrian and is one that was significant to you. Do you have any other stories that stand out?
• [00:26:53] STEVE CULVER: I think as far as effect goes, probably the biggest one was a story just maybe 5 years ago or so, where we did really, what could only be considered, like an exposé investigation on Metro Detroit's largest LGBT community center based in Ferndale. They were going through some rough times, and there were some allegations about mismanagement, and, I got a call out of the blue. I didn't even know this person.
• [00:27:22] STEVE CULVER: I later learned that there were some folks who were wondering, how do we get the attention? How do we shine a light on these problems? Because allegedly, the board didn't want to address those concerns and so they thought, "Oh, contact Steve, Steve will do something." I did, and I spoke with a lot of folks and I wrote this report about what was going on. Four weeks later, the executive director resigned. Just from a measure of how much impact a story had, that had to be the one. The things got a little worse for them, the organization after that, but it led the way for a big turnaround, and that community center now is doing better than it ever had in its 35 year career. But it took some rough going that some folks didn't want to deal with, and I was happy to let people know about that, and that really that was our role to shine a light on it. A bunch of other good folks took it from there and addressed the problems and turn that organization around.
• [00:28:32] HEIDI MORSE: You talked a bit about being so excited to have the paper on newsprint in the early years. How did the look of the paper change over the years?
• [00:28:41] STEVE CULVER: A lot, and often in the beginning of the years, because as a designer, graphic designer, that was a particular interest of mine. It's great when you're the boss, and you're the publisher because you can change it any time you want. Actually, I always told myself, I was always my own harshest critic, I think, when the issue came out. But I always had this idea that you can start from scratch on the very next issue. If you didn't like something in the last issue, you're starting from brand new on the next one. It took a while to, I would change things up perhaps maybe even too often. Except for the last several years, you could see that there was a similarity between. There wasn't a lot of design changes. After 30 years or so, you get to the point where you've got something that works. It got to the point where it's not broke, don't fix it. But certainly the look has changed a lot over the years, the size of the paper, the type of paper, the design. My last issue, the cover features about a dozen covers from throughout that 34 years, and they all look very different. Looking back on those issues, sometimes I look at it and cringe and other times I look at it and say, "Well, wow, I did that back then, that's not too bad," it's a little bit of both.
• [00:30:09] ELIZABETH SMITH: I'm curious how you evolved with technology changing in your graphics and approach to that.
• [00:30:16] STEVE CULVER: Oh it got so much easier. I used to, in the very beginning, even though it was desktop publishing, it wasn't complete design. It was basically just printing out columns of type, and you're still cutting and pasting everything, and call it keylining, and that's hot wax machines for those that don't know. That's how we put it together back then. Photos, every photo you needed to turn it into what they call a halftone. Back then, I had to take every photo that I wanted to use. I had to take it to this graphic art shop on the corner of Packard and Hill, which is now Jimmy John's, which I don't go to because I know it used to be full of chemicals and a graphic art shop. I'm kidding Jimmy John's. Jimmy John's, I'm sure they cleaned it up. [LAUGHTER] But, I had to take every photo there with a percentage of how I wanted it to enlarge or reduce it, and they created a halftone for me. Now I could do that literally in 90 seconds on my desktop without ever leaving my chair. That just became so much more efficient. Then you could concentrate on the things that you really needed to work on talking to folks and writing and collaborating. The mechanics of it got so much simpler. Also, bred in the mid '90s, late '90s, everybody and their brother and sister thought that they could publish their own publication. In Detroit we had, there was a time where we had just an enormous amount of publications, which good for everybody for doing their thing, and a lot of them lasted for quite a long time, because desktop publishing made it so accessible.
• [00:32:12] ELIZABETH SMITH: Was there anything else that we didn't ask you that you wanted to talk about today?
• [00:32:16] STEVE CULVER: Well, ever since I stopped publishing and created that last issue last month, it's been very nostalgic looking over all of this stuff and even coming to Ann Arbor and thinking about how I got started. I can't believe it's been 34 years, in some ways, it seems like it was yesterday, and it's crazy to think about. But it's been a wild ride, and I've really enjoyed it. It's nice to reflect on things as well. Like I said, my time now is to take all these archives I have and make sure they find a permanent home. I've also have a dream of doing, like a photo exhibit. I have an enormous amount of photographs over that 34 years that could really turn into a nice exhibit and historical record of what we did. Now it's time to sit back with no deadlines and just reflect on all of that, and I'm still getting used to it, but also looking forward to it.
• [00:33:15] HEIDI MORSE: What are you most proud of?
• [00:33:17] STEVE CULVER: Wow. I guess for the consistency of sticking it out for so long. Like I said, you can't say I would submit every issue to the Pulitzer Committee. But the fact that over time, and I always saw this of every criticism is that really, you need to be judged on not one article or even one issue, but over a period of time. As I do that to myself over 34 years I say that I did okay. I think, and have that to look back on and jokingly say I've served my time now, so now it's for others to carry on that. I remember when I was considered the new kid on the block, those two bar magazines I spoke of earlier that were around when I first started. They wondered who the heck guy was. Who's this new kid? I remember that, like it was yesterday. But now I'm the old guy on the block, and we've got younger folks involved doing their own thing with other publications, and that's great. It's their turn to carry the torch and go forward, and I'm happy with that.
• [00:34:37] ELIZABETH SMITH: AADL Talks To, is a production of the Ann Arbor District library.